reflects the Anglo-Scotch border influence quite strongly. In style of performance, genre, and instrument selection, the Cumberland music strongly exhibits roots in the borderland from whence its people came.

Ballad singers typically sing alone without instrumental accompaniment. Ballads often have a
haunting, plaintive sound because they are based on modal scales which do not correspond to
modern major and minor scales, Consequently, modern systems of harmony are not applicable,
and fretted instruments such as the guitar, which are designed on the principle of an equal distance
between all whole-step intervals, simply do not sound right accompanying the modal ballads.

The singing style itself is generally stark but discretely embellished by vibrato and grace notes.
The ballads are sung with a conspicuous lack of emotion, even during dramatic passages. It seems
almost as if the song itself, not the singer, is in the spotlight. Although the singer may use vocal
style effectively to set a mood, the subtlety and restraint of the singing reinforce the sense of
emotional distance created by third-person narratives.

Howell, Benita. A Survey of Folklife Along the South Fork of the Cumberland River.Knoxville, Tennessee: UT Press, 1981. 195.

More information on ballads, as well as examples...

The

folksongs

of the area also reveal cultural ideas about love, violence, etc. in the backcountry and borderlands...

Rachel Biggerstaff, Sue Ann Thompson, Gary Walden

Sackett and Koch in Kansas Folklore (p. 140) define a ballad as "a folksong that tells a story,
usually in extremely condensed fashion. Because this separate term exists to describe narrative
folksongs, some folklorists have reserved the term folksong for songs which do not tell a story but
express an emotion, which may be serious or humorous.

Ballads and folksongs have been an important part of Monroe County's heritage across the years.
This we know because of the great numbers of old-timey string bands and individual singers
whose repertories and reputations are still known.

Some English and Scottish ballads have been recovered in Monroe County along with a sampling
of the hauntingly beautiful songs of early American creation. Neither are here in great abundance
at the present. Regretably, no early folklore collections from Monroe County are available to
indicate musical tastes of early years. Ballet collections from the 1880s are available however.
These handwritten song and ballad texts tell us something about the popularity of certain titles at
a given time in history.

The musical genius of Monroe County is lies in the area of local balladry, which chronicles
historical occurrences at the grass roots level (the Beanie Short sona is a prime example), and in
the sentimental song genre. Sad songs, or tear jerkers as they are often called reflect much of life's
experiences and hardships. It is only natural for a people to immortalize in song those things that
touch their emotions most deeplv. Common indeed were such titles as "The Blind Child,"' "The
Baggage Coach Ahead," "The Prisoner's Song,""The Dream of the Miner's Child," and "Little
Joe."

The advent of the record player, radio and television has done much to diminish the folksinging
traditions in Monroe County. It is no longer necessary to commit our favorite songs to memory;
they are available at the flip of a switch. The following examples reveal that many of the old
songs are still remembered and sung in the county. They call to mind once again memories of
earlier years when the pace of living wasn't so hectic.

The texts are keyed to scholarly regional collections of folksongs and, when applicable, to the
following standard song indexes: Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballad;
Malcolm G. Laws, Jr., American Ballads from British Broadsides, and Laws' Native American
Balladry.

1.

THE BROWN GIRL

The popularity of the "Brown Girl" (Child 295) in America is
perhaps exceeded only by "Barbara Allen." This particular
version was sung by Dimple Savage Thompson.

Oh riddle, oh riddle dear mother, dear / Now riddle us both
as one
Must I marry Fair Ellen / Or bring the Brown girl home.

The Brown girl has her house and lands / Fair Ellen she has
none
So that is the reason I say my son / Go bring the Brown girl
home.

Lord Thomas went to fair Ellen's inn / And jingled hard at
the ring
And none was willing as fair Ellen / To arise and let him in.

Lord Thomas, she said, what news, what news / What news have
you brought to me?
I've come to invite you to my wedding / That's very sad news
to me.

He turned the handle toward the wall / The point toward his
breast
Saying this is the last of three lovers / God send their
souls to rest.

2.

I GAVE MY LOVE A CHERRY

Riddle ballads are extremely old and equally rare. This
ballad originated in the British Isles years ago in a
differe¤t form and under the title "Captain Wedderburn's
Courtship" (Child 46). In its present form, sung by Ova
Hunter, this ballad is widespread across the United States.
Hazel Goodin also contributed a fragmented version.

I gave my love a cherry without a stone
I gave my love a chicken without a bone
I gave my love a baby with no cryin'.
When a cherry is blooming it has no stone
When a chicken is pipping it has no bone
When a baby is sleeping there's no cryin'.

I'll send my love a palace without any door
I'll send my love an apple without any core
I'll send my love a chicken without any bone
I'll send my love a cherry without any stone
I'll send my love a ring without any rim
I'll send my love a baby no cryin'.
I'll send my love a room and in it she may be
And she may unlock it without any key.

How can there be a palace without any door?
How can there be an apple without any core?
How can there be a chicken without any bone?
How can there be a cherry without any stone?
How can there be a ring without any rim?
How can there be a baby that's not cryin'?
How can there be a room and in it she may be?
And how can she unlock it without any key?

When the palace is a-building there is no door
When the apple's in the blossom there is no core
When the chicken's in the egg there is no bone
When the cherry's in the bloom there is no stone
When the ring is a-running there is no rim
When baby is asleep it's not cryin'
My heart is the room and in it she may be
And she may unlock it without any key.

3.

BARBARA ALLEN

"Barbara Allen" (Child 84) is perhaps the most popular of all
the old ballads that made the trip from England to the New
World. Dimple Savage Thompson sang this version. Other
versions were sung by Hazel and Myrtle Jobe and Hazel Goodin.
Mrs. Goodin calls it "The Rose and the Green Brier."

It was upon a high, high hill / Two maidens chose their
dwelling,
And one was known both far and wide / Was known as Barb'ra
Allen.

T'was in the merry month of May / All the flowers blooming,
A young man on his deathbed lay / For the love of Barbtra
Allen.

He sent a servant unto her / In the town where she was
dwelling
Come Miss, O Miss to my master dying / If your name be
Barb'ra Allen.

Slowly, slowly she got up / And to his bedside going
She drew the curtain to one side / And said, "Young man
you're dying."

He stretched one pale hand to her / As though he would to
touch her
She hopped and skipped across the floor / Young man, she
says, I won't have you.

Remember, 'member in the town / 'Twas in the tavern drinking,
You drank a health to the ladies all / But you slighted
Barbtra Allen.

He turned his face toward the wall / His back upon his
darling
I know I shall see you no more / So goodby Barbtra Allen.

As she was going to her home / She heard the church bell
tolling
She looked to the east and looked to the west
And saw the corpse a-coming.

Oh hand me down the corpse of clay / That I may look upon it
I might have saved that young man's life / If I had done mv
duty.

Oh mother mother make my bed / O make it long and narrow
Sweet William died for me today / I shall die for him
tomorrow.

Sweet William died on a Saturday night / And Barbtra Allen on
a Sunday
The old lady died for the love of them both / She died on
Easter Monday.

Sweet William was buried in one graveyard / Barb'ra Allen in
another
A rose grew on Sweet William's grave / A brier on Barb'ra
Allen's.

They grew and they grew to the steeple top / And there they
rew no higher
And there they tied in a true lover knot / The rose clung
round the brier.

5.

LORD RANDAL

Known widely throughout the eastern United States, "Lord
Randal" (Child 12) is another of Monroe County's ballads
which came to us from the British Isles. This version was
sung by Dimple Savage Thompson.

Where have you been Lord Randal my son
Where have you been my handsome young man
I've been to the wild wood, Mother make my bed soon
I'm weary from hunting and fain would lie down.

Whom did you meet Lord Randal my son
Whom did you meet my handsome young man
I met with my true love, Mother make my bed soon
I'm weary from hunting and fain would lie down.

What had you for supper Lord Randal my son
What had you for supper my handsome young man
Eels fried in butter; Mother make my bed soon
I'm weary from hunting and fain would lie down.

What did your dogs do Lord Randal my son
What did your dogs do my handsome young man
They stretched out and died; Mother make my bed soon
I'm weary from hunting and want to lie down.

I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal my son
I fear you are poisoned, my handsome young man
Yes I am poisoned; Mother make my bed soon
I'm sick at my heart and want to lie down.

6.

THE WEXFORD GIRL

This is a version of the Wexford Girl (Laws P35), which is
widespread throughout the United States. It was sung by Ward
Curtis.

When I was but a friendless boy / Just nineteen years of
My father bound me to a miller / That I might learn the
trade.

I fell in love with one dear girl / With dark and roving
eyes,
I promised her I'd marry her / If me she would not deny.

Up stepped her mother to the door / So boldly she did say,
Oh honey do marry her / And take her far away.

zHer mother she persuaded me / To take her for a wife,
Oh, Satan persuaded me / To take away her life.

I asked her for to take a walk, / Over the blooming field so
good,
That we might have some secret talk / And name our wedding
day.

We had not travelled very far / When I looked all around and
around,
I picked up an old fence stick / And straight way knocked her
down.

She fell upon her trembling knees / For mercy sake she cried,
Oh Johnny dear don't murder me / For I'm not fit to die.

I took her by her little hand / And threw her around and
round,
Then I drug her to the riverside / And threw her in to drown.

And I returned to the miller's house / It was ten o'clock
that night,
But little did the miller know / What I had been about.

He looked at me most earnestly / Said Johnny what bloodies
your clothes,
I answered her most quickly / I was bleeding at the nose.

About three days and better / This damsel she was seen,
Floating by her sister's house / Down in old Knoxville Town.

7.

RICH OLD MERCHANT

This version of "The Bramble Briar" (Laws M-32) was sung by
Ward Curtis. In earlier versions the Brown Boy is a servant.

In Fairview there lived a rich old merchant
He had two sons and a daughter fair
A pretty brown boy all robed with danger
Come courting of the lily fair.

As they were talking of their lovely courtship
Her younger brother overheard
He went straight way and told the others
And this deprived her of her love.
He went straightway and told the others
And this deprived her of her love.

Oh early, early the next morning
Out into the wild woods all three did go
They rambled over hills and mountains
And to some dark valley they did go.

They rambled on till they came to a lonely desert;
And thar they killed him and throwed
They rambled on till they came to a lonely desert;
And thar they killed him and throwed.

And they returned back home that evening
Their sister asked for the loving one
We lost him out in the wild woods hunting
And more of him could we ever find
>We lost him out in the wild woods hunting
And more of him could we ever find.

So early, early this morning
Out into the wild woods she did go
She rambled over hills and mountains
And to some dark valley she did roam.
She rambled on till she came to a lonely desert
And thar she found him killed and throwed
His rosy lips were inclined to hell
His dimpled cheeks were aflow with blood.

She kissed him over and over crying
He was a bosom friend of mine
When she returned back home that evening
There brothers asked where she had been
You've harmed, you've harmed, you cruel wretches
And for the same you both shall hang.
You've harmed, you've harmed, you cruel wretches
And for the same you both shall hang.

They went out to sea that evening
The lightning flared and the wind did roar
They both got drowned and it was no wonder
That the raging sea proved their overthrow.
They both got drowned and it was no wonder
That the raging sea proved their overthrow.

Not only ballads of the Cumberland had their origins in the
borders of Great Britain. Instruments such as the bagpipes and the fiddle that thrived on the Anglo-Scotch borders are prevalent in the Cumberlands as well.

33. JIM BOWLES, TRADITIONAL FIDDLER

(pp 38-
9)

Bruce Green

Monroe County has been the home of some of the finest and
most distinctive traditional fiddle music in Kentucky. During
the last century, old time fiddlers such as Isom Mondav.
CooneY Perdue, Wash Carter Finley "Red" Belcner, Tom Biggers,
Joe D. Walker, Gilbert Maxey, and Jim Bowles supplied the
music for dances and parties, which were a highly important
part of Monroe County social life. Of this older order of
rural musicians, Jim Bowles remains one of the best.

Jim Bowles has lived in Monroe County almost all his life. He
was born in 1903 in Rock Bridge, where his family farmed for
most of his early life. Traditional fiddle music was at its
peak of popularity at that time, and Jim began to play at an
early age:

"I guess I was about ten years old. I'd always play you have
those little sticks of stovewood, you know, and I'd get 'em
up and saw on 'em, like I was a-fiddling when I was a little
bitty feller.

"And my father, times was hard and he had to go to Indiana
and make money. Back in them days, there wasn't no money to
be got, hardly. "I think then he only made thirty-five
dollars a month. And he came through Louisville, and he come
to a pawn shop. He bought me a fiddle. And, of course, I
learnt several tunes.

I know the first tune ever learnt to play was Steamboat
Bill. There was an old colored man, when we lived out on
Uncle Jim Carver's place. They had him a-building a barn. I
remember hearing him sing, and I kind of picked it up:

Steamboat Bill, steaming down the Mississippi
Steamboat Bill, thought I heerd the puffing of the
Whippoorwill."

Like all the traditional fiddlers of his day, Jim Bowles
learned to play from local musicians. His uncle, Wash Carter,
was undoubtedly the most important influence on both his
style and repertoire, but he was also influenced by a
neighbor named John Brady, a local traveling photographer
named Homer Botts, Henry Carver, Tom Biggers, and others.
By the time he was about fifteen, Jim was good enough to
start playing for dances, and he has continued to do so for
most of his life. In addition, he has traveled to Columbia,
Glasgow, Scottsville, and other Kentucky towns to compete in
old-time fiddler's contests, where he has won dozens of
ribbons.

At different times in his life, Jim Bowles played semi-
professionally with bands. In the early days of radio,
he played with Finley "Red" Belcher, who went on to become a
well-known performer in Kentucky before his death in an
automobile accident:

"We played all over this country. We played at Tuscola,
Illinois. We had a program there. He got us in there Lazy Jim
Day. He was on radio. We'd get up and play before daylight,
you know. That'd be on that program about four o'clock. And I
just got tired of it. We came back here, me and him. We put
on a program at Fountain Run, one time acting, you know. We
had a man with us, was kind of a comedian. That's been forty
or fifty years ago.

"I was always with somebody. We played at Columbia. And then
we went oter to Glasgow and played, I don't know how many
times. I used to play out at Tompkinsville. I used to play
out there for four years every Saturday morning at eight
o'clock. Me and Early Botts and this here Biggers. I'd guess
that was about '64. We just went on and advertised for them
stores and places like that."

Since the death of his wife in 1966, Jim Bowles plays less
than he used to. Still, he remains one of the best of the
older traditional fiddlers in southern Kentucky. His
extensive repertoire includes manY rare and unusual early
tunes, such as Christmas, Old Sage Fields, Drunkard's
Hiccups, Calico, Mary Marshall, Nancy Dalton, Railroad
Through The Rocky Mountains, and There'll Be No Supper Here
Tonight, as well as fine versions of popular standards.
Stylistically, he plays in the tradition of the best of the
eastern Kentucky fiddlers. Many of his versions of tunes are
modal in nature and are played with drones, slides and
rhythmic tension that few musicians can achieve or imitate.
His bowing technique is complex and does not follow a set
pattern allowing him to create a very individualistic and
emotional sound. Still, his playing is firmly rooted in the
musical traditions of the Monroe County area, and he remains
today as one of the few faithful practitioners of a dying
folk art.

from Benita Howell's A Survey of Folklife Along the South
Fork of the Cumberland River

(UT Press: Knoxville, TN)1981, pp 196-200.

Instrumental Music

Before the turn of the century, the fiddle and the five-
string banjo were the principal instruments played in the Big
South Fork area. The guitar was not played locally until
after 1910 and remained only a second ary instrument for
old-time musicians. Another Bluegrass instrument, the
mandolin, appeared in the area as recently as thirty years
ago (the 1950s).

The dulcimer, which is popularly associated with Appalachian
music, is completely unfamiliar to most of the local old-time
musicians. The dulcimer was known in Wayne County, and one
Fentress County family brought an instrument from Claibourne
County, Tennessee. Informants familiar with the dulcimer
agree that it was used chiefly in playing sacred music.

The harmonica or "French Harp" was a popular instrument in
the past, and people also played jews-harps and other novelty
instruments purchased from mail-order houses or from
peddlers. Homemade flutes and whistles were fashioned from
cane or bark cylinders. But the story of traditional
instrumental music in the Big South Fork is largely the story
of the fiddle and the banjo.

The Fiddle

The fiddle was used in the British Isles and the American
colonies before the Big South Fork region was settled, so it
probably was present in the area from the beginning. It
remained the fundamental instrument, next to which the banjo
was of secondary importance and served mainly for
accompaniment. The fiddle repertoire (i.e., items which
continue to be identified as "old-time fiddle tunes" even
when they are played on another instrument) forms the Big
South Fork's second major category of folk music. Like
folksong, this instrumental music is a composite: it includes
ancient Celtic airs ("Soldier's Joy," "Billy in the
Lowground," "Rocky Road to Dublin," "Devil's Dream") melodies
that originated on the Appalachian frontier ("Cumberland
Gap," "Sally ~oodin"'); minstrel shownumbers ("Arkansas
Traveler," "Turkey in the Straw," "Listen to the
Mockingbird"), and popular tunes of the early twentieth
century ("Down Yonder," "Chicken Reel").

Breakdowns or reels make up the standard part of the local
fiddle reportoire. Breakdowns are fast dance tunes played in
two-four or four-four time, the sort of tunes associated with
popular images of mountain fiddle music. Many of these pieces
are quite old, with popular counter-parts in the British
Isles. Their titles are often obscure and may vary from place
to place, or even from performer to performer. Titles also
appear to have changed through time, according to information
supplied by older informants. Lyrics to quite a few numbers
survive and sometimes shed light on the meanings of the
titles. However, it is impossible to know whether the words
were original or composed later. There are undoubtedly
instances of both.

Other fiddle pieces include waltzes, slow-to-moderate dance
tunes in three-four time, and hornpipes, sprightly tunes
which originally accompanied a kind of solo dance brought to
America in the eighteenth century. The hornpipe tunes survive
even though the dance has been forgotten, and they are
usually played fast like breakdowns.

Some fiddle pieces were not dance tunes at all but were
performed as solos. They contain rhythmic intricacies and
modal elements which make them unsuited to accompaniment.
These numbers were played between dance sets to give the
dancers a break and to allow the fiddler to demonstrate his
skill. "Bonaparte's Retreat" is probably the most popular
survivor of this idiom.

Most fiddle tunes consist of two strains of equal length: a
high-pitched part sometimes referred to as the "Fine" and a
low part known as the "Coarse." Each part is usually repeated
once, but this practice varies from one performer to another.
Most tunes begin with the "Fine" and end on the "Coarse" and
are played over and over for as long as the dance demands or
until the musicians give out. Some tunes, such as
"Bonaparte's Retreat," have three parts repeated in this
manner.

Fiddle tunes are played in various keys, with the most common
keys being D, G, and A, followed by C and F. Fiddlers will
occasionally use E and B-flat. Tunes tend to be fixed in
certain keys: "Soldier's Joy," for example is always played
in D, "Old Joe Clark" in A, "Tennessee Wagoner" in D. Certain
breakdowns like "Fire on the Mountain" and "Orange Blossom
Special" rock back and forth between two keys. Alternate
tunings ("round keys") which let the four open or unfingered
strings sound a chord are essential to some breakdowns.

Fiddles are precious heirlooms around the Big South Fork, and
every old, well-played fiddle in the area has at least
several stories attached to it. Some very old handmade
fiddles are still being played by local ancient musicians. In
the days before mail-order or store-bought instruments became
easy to obtain, fiddles must have been even more cherished
than they are today. The fiddle was the most difficult
stringed instrument to make, but the Big South Fork had at
least one well-known fiddle maker, Hiram Sharp (1885-1976),
who lived at Norma in Scott County.

Fiddle-playing style is a highly idiosyncratic matter, and
every good fiddler tries to cultivate a distinct sound and
technique. Style tends to be transmitted through personal
contact and imitation, usually between a parent and child,
but occasionally between an outstanding local fiddler and an
eager young protege. Fiddling, like other forms of musical
expertise, has been a family tradition for the most part, and
certain Big South Fork families have long-standing
reputations for producing good musicians (see Section V).

In spite of all the individual variation among fiddlers, some
generalizations about style are still possible. Local
informants themselves recognize two distinct patterns. In the
common old-time hoedown or "jig" style, the fiddler may hold
the instrument under his chin in the typical violin fashion,
or he may play with its bottom resting down against his ribs.
He may grasp the bow at the frog, or he may hold it by the
as did the European elite musicians of the seventeenth
century. The hoe-down fiddler relies on short bow strokes
embellished by frequent "digs" in which the upward
accentuation of a certain note is produced by applying
pressure on the bow as it travels across the string. "Double-
noting" in which two adjacent strings are played
simultaneously to produce a drone effect (as typified by the
bagpipes) also embellishes the hoedown style; some fiddlers,
after modifying the bridge of the instrument, even employ
"triple-noting."

Another manner of playing, the "smooth" style, was
popularized locally by Leonard Rutherford (c. 1900-1954), a
well-known Monticello musician identified by many informants
as the region's virtuoso fiddler. Exactly where Rutherford
learned the syle remains unclear. In smooth fiddling the
instrument and bow are almost invariably held in the
conventional violin manner. The whole bow, manipulated in
slow, smooth strokes, produces a legato effect. Other
technical hallmarks of this style include glides, vibrato,
slurred notes, and little double-noting.

Because the fiddle was an integral part of folk dancing, and
because it seemed to encourage revelry, it was condemned as
"the devil's instrument' during the wave of religious fervor
that swept the country in the early nineteenth century. Its
notoriety lingers on around the Big South Fork today 1n
conspicuous ways: in the old simile "as thick as fiddlers in
Hell," in the disapproval of square dancing that persists in
some quarters, and 1n conservative churches' ban on musical
instruments in their services. In some slyly self-conscious
ways, local fiddlers maintain the tradition themselves,
through the high-spirited revelry suggested by the titles of
such tunes as "Devil's Dream," "Hell's Broke Loose in
Georgia," or "Dance All Night With a Bottle in My Hand," and
by the custom of putting a few sets of rattlesnake rattles in
the fiddle, if only for the practical purpose of keeping the
soundbox free of cobwebs. `

The Banjo

As for the other important traditional instrument, it is
unclear exactly when the five-string banjo entered the Big
South Fork region. It assuredly must have been present by the
1870's and it may predate the Civil War. The instrument has
African origins and was used by black slaves in the Southeast
as early as the 1750's (Epstein 1975). As the blacks became
acculturated, they adapted their instrument to play Anglo-
American folk dance music. The Americanized banjo began to be
used to accompany the fiddle. By the 1830's, a fretless model
that otherwise resembled the modern instrument had evolved,
and the number of strings--four melody strings plus a drone
string running halfway up the neck--was standardized.
Popularized by the minstrel shows as part of their burlesque
of plantation life, the banjo spread among white musicians
while blacks, at the same time, rejected this artifact of
their own heritage.

In the Appalachian region, musicians discovered that the
fretless five-string banjo was well-suited to playing the old
modal melodies that survived in many of their songs and
fiddle tunes. A number of open banjo tunings were devised to
facilitate the playing of certain songs, and
several of these are still used by old-time banjo pickers
around the Big South Fork. Factory-made banjos with frets
began to appear in the 1800's, but many homemade instruments
continued to be made without frets, partly because of
tradition and their suitability for modal music, partly
because it was difficult to install the frets properly.
However, fretted banjos became universal when mail-order and
store-bought instruments replaced homemade ones. Frets
permitted greater accuracy in noting the instrument, and made
possible both the playing of chords and the playing of melody
lines farther up the neck of the instrument. This innovation
enhanced the development of the Earl Scruggs or Bluegrass
three-finger banjo style that is so popular today.

Nineteenth-century methods of playing the banjo were quite
different and have recently gained renewed interest among
fans of old-time music. The old minstrel show "frailing" or
"clawhammer" style called "knocking it" by Big South Fork
musicians was probably derived from the Afro-American banjo
tradition. In this style of playing, the right hand functions
as one rigid unit, with the thumb and index finger held in a
"claw" position. Melody strings are sounded with the index
finger as the hand moves down across the strings, and the
thumb plucks the drone string as the hand moves back up on
the following off-beat. Bailey (1972) believes that an
African influence may endure in the inherent syncopation
common to this manner of playing.

This particular banjo style no longer survives in the Big
South Fork area, although the parents of this generation of
old-timers did play in this fashion. The prevalent old-time
banjo style in the area today is two-finger picking involving
the right thumb and index finger, in a manner similar to two-
finger banjo styles that have been recorded in Western North
Carolina. The index finger picks out the melody, punctuating
it in rhythmic downward brushes across the lower strings,
while the thumb continues to sound the drone string on the
accompanying off-beat and occasionally drops down to play a
"drop thumb" lick on the second or third string. When and how
this two-finger style came to replace the clawhammer style in
the Big South Fork area are interesting questions which
informants cannot answer.

Banjo-picking, like fiddling, is very idiosyncratic, and
zindividual players have their own unique technical variations
even if they all follow the same basic pattern. Drawing on
the simpler aesthetic of an earlier time, their understated
playing contrasts sharply with the flashy exhibitionistic
"virtuosity" of today's Bluegrass banjo style. The folklife
study's sample of recorded music includes many fine examples
of old-time banjo playing (see Supplement, Catalogue of Music
Tapes and Section V).

Played together, the fiddle and the banjo were the foundation
for the latter-day string band which developed after the
guitar and other instruments appeared in the Big South Fork
area around 1910. But into the early twentieth century,
"string band" usually meant fiddle and banjo. In one playing
style, the banjo closely followed the fiddle line, playing
practically in unison with the fiddle. The other style used
the banjo more as a rhythmic accompaniment. Both styles are
heard on music tapes recorded during the Folklife Study.

had its roots in the stone towers of the borderland, so important for protection from frequent raiders from across the border.

Settlers (in the Cumberlands) made the mistake of supposing that the country
lacked building-stone, so deep under the loam and verdure lay
the whole foundation rock, but soon they discovered that
their better houses had only to be taken from beneath their
feet. The first stone house in the State, and withal the most
notable, is " Traveller's Rest," in Lincoln County, built in
1783 by Governor Metcalf, who was then a stone-mason, for
Isaac Shelby, the first Governor of Kentucky. To those who
know the blue-grass landscape, this type of homestead is
familiar enough, with its solidity of foundation, great
thickness of walls, enormous, low chimneys, and little
windows. The owners were the architects and builders, and
with stern, necessitous industry translated their condition
into their work, giving it an intensely human element. It
harmonized with need, not with feeling ­ was built by the
virtues, and not by the vanities. With no fine balance of
proportion, with details few, scant, and crude, the entire
effect of the architecture was not unpleasing, so honest was
its poverty, so rugged and robust its purpose. It was the
gravest of all historic commentaries written in stone. Varied
fate has overtaken these old-time structures. Many have been
torn down, yielding their well-chosen sites to newer, showier
houses. Others became in time the quarters of the slaves.
Others still have been hidden away beneath weather-boarding
a veneer of commonplace modernism as though whitewashed or
painted plank were finer than roughhewn graystone. But one is
glad to discover that in numerous instances they are the
preferred homes of those who have taste for the old in native
history, and pride in family associations and traditions. On
the thinned, open landscape nothing stands out with a more
pathetic air of nakedness than one of these stone houses,
long since abandoned and fallen into ruin. Under the Kentucky
sky houses crumble and die without seeming to grow old,
without an aged toning down of colors, without the tender
memorials of mosses and lichens, and of the whole race of
clinging things. So not until they are quite overthrown does
Nature reclaim them, or draw once more to her bosom the walls
and chimneys within whose faithful bulwarks, and by whose
cavernous, glowing recesses, our great-grandmothers and
great-grandfathers danced and made love, married, suffered,
and fell asleep.

Allen, James Lane. The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky and Other Kentucky Articles. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1900. 192-3.

Not only "Cumberland," but also other regional
place names arise from British border names.

In the spring of 1888 Arthur and his English companions began
constructing a town in the sparsely occupied area of Yellow
Creek and named it Middlesborough after the successful steel
industrial town of Middlesbrough, England. The name was soon
shortened to "Middlesboro" except for the early official
documents. The town design began with a 100 foot wide
thoroughfare running east and west called Cumberland Avenue.
Parallel to Cumberland, the avenues were given English names
such as Winchester, Doorchester and Ilchester. Streets
running north and south were numbered. The three small hills
of the area were named Queenabury Heights, Maxwelton Braes
and Arthur Heights. To protect the area from flooding a canal
was dug to redirect water flow around the residential and
commercial development. A rail line was constructed around
the town to provide access to the prearranged industrial
sites and coal mines. An earthen dam creating an artificial
lake three miles long was constructed for the towns water
supply. By 1890 there were 16 industries operating and 41
others under construction, 7 hotels and 9 more under
construction, 6 banks, 5 churches, a library, school,
exhibition hall and a city hall. Over the entrance of one of
these buildings is an embossed figure of a dragon confronting
a serpent. This scene represents the dragon as the keeper of
virtue in constant vigilance against evil, represented by the
serpent. This building is located at the intersection of
Cumberland Avenue and Twentieth Street called Fountain
Square. Many of the sturdy buildings and well engineered
municipal facilities are being effectively utilized by the
towns inhabitants of today. The water impoundment of Fern
Lake is even yet reputed to be among the purest of water
sources in the country.

is yet another Cumberland term with Anglo-Scotch
origins. Its usage reflects the sense of isolation prevalent in both the borderlands and backcountry, and the resulting dislike of "otherness".

Peoples of the Cumberland gap feel they have
"occasion to regard new-comers with distrust, which, once
aroused, is difficult to dispel and now they will wish to
know you and your business before treating you with that
warmth which they are only too glad to show."

Allen, James Lane. The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky and Other Kentucky Articles. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900. 235.

is not unlike that of the border homes. Both in the Cumberland Gap and in the Anglo-Scotch border regions, frequent battles prevented architecture from thriving. Furthermore, the geographic location of the Cumberland Gap made it into a gateway to the west, an area through which people were travelling as much as a place of settlement. Thus it took on a sense of transience like that seen in the Anglo-Scotch borders for the same reason.

The dwellings often mere cabins with a single room are built
of rough-hewn logs, chinked or daubed, though not always.
Often there is a puncheon floor and no chamber roof.
One of these mountaineers, called into court to testify as to
the household goods of a defendant neighbor, gave in as the
inventory, a string of pumpkins, a skillet without a handle,
and " a wild Bill." " A wild Bill " is a bed made by boring
auger-holes into a log, driving sticks into these, and
overlaying them with hickory bark and sedge-grass a favorite
zcouch. The low chimneys, made usually of laths daubed, are so
low that the saying, inelegant though true, is current, that
you may sit by the fire inside and spit out over the top. The
cracks in the walls are often large enough to give ingress
and egress to child or dog. Even cellars are little known,
potatoes sometimes being kept during winter in a hole dug
under the hearthstone. More frequently a trap - door is made
through the plank flooring in the middle of the room, and in
a hole beneath are put potatoes, and, in case of wealth,
jellies and preserves. Despite the wretchedness of their
habitations and the rigors of mountain climate, they do not
suffer with cold, and one may see them out in snow knee-deep
clad in low brogans, and nothing heavier than a jeans coat
and hunting shirt.

Allen, James Lane. The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky and Other Kentucky Articles. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900. 236-7.

Because of the temporariness of their
dwellings, folk in the Gap had to work together to quickly
re-construct their homes. Just as they had in the
borderlands, communities came together to help their newest
neighbors construct homes and outbuildings.

HOUSE AND BARN RAISINGS

When someone needed a new barn or house, often the neighbors
would come in to help build it, getting it finished in a
short period of time.

"We'd get it done in about two days. They'd be anywhere from
20 to 25 hands a workin' on it." John Dossey.
+ + + +
"All the neighbors would come in and help. The women would
come in and help cook dinner." Gertie Dossey.
+ + + +

"They had barn railings back in my early days. The barns were
built of logs. They'd cut the logs off their farm and then
the neighbors'd come in and they'd drag these logs to the
spot where they wanted to build the barn. And maybe they d
build one big square barn or they might build several little
square barns and connect them together. And all the neighbors
would help and the women would come and help to get the
dinner. It was pleasure and work mixed kindly together for
them all to be together. So we have one on our farm today, a
big log barn that my husband said was built that way. They
came in and raised it, and that was called barn railings."
Rosa Walden.

An example of the large number of children in most households of the Gap--and subsequently the
lack of privacy, can be seen in the Hensley home in the Cumberlands of Kentucky.

HENSLEY SETTLEMENT

Sherman Hensley and his wife, Nicey Ann, who was three months pregnant, moved on the
mountain in December of 1903. Besides their meager household belongings, they brought with
them a small son, a gray mare, two cows, two heifers, a calf and about eighteen hogs.(11)
Sherman was twenty one and Nicey Ann was seventeen. They spent the winter in a one room log
cabin that had been built earlier by people who had pastured their cattle on the mountain top
during the summer. Sherman went on the mountain he said, "to make a living and there was
plenty of outlet for stock".(12) By this he meant the remoteness of the area provided plenty of
open country to allow his hogs to forage freely on chestnuts and other wild food nutrients
provided by the forest. The next year Nicey Ann's brother Andrew Jackson Hensley and his
daughter Nancy, who was married to Willy Gibbons, moved to the Settlement. Soon the
population grew both by folks moving in, and a fast growing baby population. Nicey Ann and
Nancy had a combined total of thirty-two children.

The small community was self sufficient, having no roads or means of communication with the
outside world other than a hard walk or horseback ride to the valleys below. Most of the basics of
food, clothing and shelter were made or grown. The result of this isolation was a way of life more
similar to the pioneer period of 1790-1800 than that of the twentieth century. This community
survived until its first and last inhabitant, Sherman Hensley, left in 1951.

was very strong in the Cumberland, and reflected the Clans of the borders, as exemplified in
the Association and Meetings of the Sects...

Memorializing eventually became an annual affair in conjunction with the Annual Meetings and
Associations of the sects. And growing up with these three-day gatherings was another custom,
that of the jockey ground, or just good old-fashioned hoss swapping. The people attending the
Associations from miles around came in wagons and horseback. On a day in the afternoon, or
throughout the whole event for that matter, the men would choose a bottom piece of ground of
several acres and trot their nags and mules up and down, calling out, "How'll ye swap?" Men
could be seen looking into the mouths of horses, taking little jog-trots up and down the dusty
field, clapping the nag's rump with his willow switch, putting harness on mules and making them
pull a log up and down the bottom. Of course there were many other kinds of trading, such as in
livestock, work swapping, dog chasing, and even a little knife throwing swapping from the fist,
sight unseen.

Another clear example of such "Kinship and the Community " is discussed in this selection...

Initially, a handful of families formed the core of each settlement and they usually produced many
children. Given that some of today's octo genarians report making their first trips to town when
they were past twe it is not difficult to understand why young people living in the streambottom
communities tended to find marriage partners among their close nei bors. It was not uncommon
for sets of brothers to marry sets of sisters, creating "double first-cousin bonds among the
offspring.[Editor's note: My grandmother was born in the Cumberland Gap area, and my family
has two sets of such double first-cousins.] Siblings and cousins remained in their home territory
because they inherited a port. of the family founder's initial land holding. As relatives settled close
to one another on land inherited from common ancestors, the community became an extended
kinship unit. Kinship bonds were continually strengtheredby the fact that almost all potential
marriage partners in the vicinity were linked by some degree of blood relationship.

After a lengthy study of Tennessee ridge communities composed of a few intermarrying families,
Elmora Matthews (1965) identified several benefits of marrying kin: it is a means of consolidating
land ownership and conserving wealth within families) it strengthens cohesion within the
community by continually reinforcing its kinship bonds; and it provides mates who sharecommon
experiences and aspirations, who are "expected" end therefore approved of by the community at
large.

Where kindred and neighborhood have become coterminous, a formal organization to provide for
governance and community services seems less necessary than in communities solidified by no
such moral bonds. Neighborly obligations which are also kinship obligations insure mutual aid
through informal cooperation. Such kin-based patterns of social interaction have persisted to a
great extent in communities within and near the BSFNRRA boundaries, although informants
agree that community-wide ­labor exchange began to decline many years ago.

The household survey of BSFNRRA residents (see Appendix I) revealed that social interaction is
more frequent with close kin than with neighbors who are related only distantly or not at all. With
the exception p churches, organization memberships are almost non-existent, and some church
members do not attend regularly. Family activities tend to be non-specific and unplanned with the
exception of large family reunions which involve out-of-town relatives. Casual interaction with
kin and exclusion of non-kin relationships are reinforced by the continuing practice of living near
kin. Typically, adult siblings with families live near one another and near surviving parents. Along
the Leatherwood Road and in the Beech Grove section of McCreary County where most of the
families affectedby relocation live, there are several clusters of households which form extended
families of this kind.

Visible proof of the continuing importance of kinship comes from the large collections of framed
family photographs and snapshot albums which are proudly displayed in the living room of every
home. Where labor out-migration has caused temporary separations, the photographs make it
possible to introduce absent family members to a visiting newcomer. These introductions are an
essential part of becoming acquainted.

Howell, Benita. A Survey of Folklife Along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Knosville, TN: UT Press, 1975. 158-9.

The "amoral familism" mentioned by David Hackett Fisher is discussed in this selection...

Like most of Appalachia, the Big South Fork area was first settled nder frontier conditions. It was
some time before formal political and llegal institutions followed the settlers. These frontier
communities had some internal resources for social control--the obligations of kinship and a
system of ethics derived from their religion. Theirs was a society based on a moral order (see
Redfield 1947).

Although some influential authors (e.g. Caudill 1963) still subscribe to the notion that
Appalachians are inherently lawless because they are the descendants of outlaws and social misfits
who sought refuge in the mountains to evade the legal and social order of the seaboard colonies,
scholarly historians have convincingly discredited this myth (see Caruso 1951; Leyburn 1962).

Informal social controls could be effective in Appalachia as in other "folk" societies so long as the
settlement was a homogeneous unit based on kinship obligations and a shared moral code. But
before the nineteenth century was over, economic development was already placing severe stress
on the traditional system of social control. The population grew and became more heterogeneous.
New quasi-urban towns and camps sprang up, bringing together people who did not feel that
they were members of a community in the traditional sense. Those who abandoned farming for
wage work suddenly had extra cash and leisure time, and whiskey was the most convenient means
of spending the two simultaneously. Disputation and lawlessness increased under these
circumstances. Formal political and legal institutions wer strengthened to deal with these
problems, but they did not always coexist comfortably with the traditional pattern of kin loyalty.

Howell, Benita. A Survey of Folklife Along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Knoxville, TN: UT Press, 1975. 181.

An example of the "wildness" of weddings in the Gap and the borders can be seen in the practice
of "shivaree," discussed in this selection...

Shivaree was the early custom of teasing a married couple on their wedding night. The bride was
carried around in a tub at times, and the groom was ridden on a rail.

"When two got married they'd shivaree 'em. They'd get 'em out and ride the man around the house
on a rail and the women had to ride in a tub. They never did shivaree us. It was just fun. Nobody
didn't get killed or hurt or nothing." Gracie King.
+ + + +
"My husband and I were shivareed when we got married. The way they did it was they got a rail
and rode the man on a rail and they put me in the washing tub, and a couple of men carried me all
the way around the house in a washing tub."
Eva Bybee.
+ + + +
"Got me on a big cedar pole. Cut a cedar pole you know with knots all over it. Come up there
and got me up out of bed 'bout midnight, and here they took me around for about a couple of
hours and they brought me back and put me in the bed. Didn't do a thing to my wife."
Lank Kirkpatrick.
+ + + +
"When a couple got married, why it was a custom in the neighborhood to shivaree the boy and the
girl. And they'd go to find out what home they's in. Lots of times the boy and girl would have to
slip off and hide to keep them from shivareeing them. But they'd go to the homes; if they caught
them there why they had bells and fired guns and they usually had the girls to take the girl out and
put her in a tub and carry her around in the tub. And they d put the boy astride a rail and make
him ride this rail. They'd take him in a pond. They made us think they were going to shivaree us.
They got to the window where we were sleeping and fired some guns and ran around the house a
little time, but it wasn't no group that came in to shivaree us; just scared me."
Rosa Walden.
+ + + +
Mrs Gertie Dossey: They was a lot of fun.
Mr. John Dossey: I went to my uncle's shivaree about two miles from here. We commenced at
eight o'clock and wound up at ten-thirty. We had old muskets and double-barrel shotguns loaded
with powder and shot. We didn't use no shot that night. Just powder. We jarred out twenty-one
window lights out of the house by iust settin' the gun up against the house and bang! bang' bang!
Mrs. Dossey: Used to ride 'em on a rail.
Mr. Dossey: We made up money and paid for them winder lights. We had a friend, Owen
Lawrence, he rung an old dinner bell for two hours and a half, just stood there, it in the night
time now. We was keepin' everybody awake and ourselves. too, I guess. But we had a wonderful
time.
Mrs. Dossey: I've been to 2 or 3 where they'd ride the man on a rail I've seen 'em ride a bride in a
tub.
+ + + +
"One of the things that people really looked forward to was when a couple got married, they
would have what they called shivaree. Everybody that was going to take part in it, they would slip
right easy, and nobody would know they wuz anywhere about until the guns went to shootin'.
They would just march around the house shooting guns one right after another. When they would
go so many rounds around the house shooting their guns, and then they would go to the door and
stick a fence rail through the door and the man would get on the rail and they would ride him
around the house on the rail or down the road. Sometimes the women would join in and push
the man's wife in a tub and carry her. I was shivareed. They put me on a rail and rode me around,
and I fell off of it and I just got up and went in the house and told them that was all the riding on a
rail I was going to do."
Oral Page.

Such violent practices of "fun" are also discussed in this selection...

...the semblance of popular joys, and which certainly were not passed over without merriment and
turbulent, disorderly fun, were really set apart for the gravest of civic and political reasons: militia
musters, stump-speakings, county court day assemblages, and the yearly July celebrations. Still
other pleasures were of an economic or utilitarian nature. Thus the novel and exciting contests by
parties of men at squirrel-shooting looked to the taking of that destructive animal's scalp, to say
nothing of the skin ; thehunting of beehives in the woods had some regard to the scarcity of sugar;
and the nut gatherings and wild-grape gatherings by younger folks in the gorgeous autumnal days
were partly in memory of a scant, unvaried larder, which might profitably draw upon nature's rich
and salutary hoard. Perhaps the dearest pleasures among them were those that lay closest to their
dangers. They loved the pursuit of marauding parties, the solitary chase ; were always ready to
throw away axe and mattock for rifle and knife. Among pleasures,certainly, should be mentioned
the weddings. For plain reasons these were commonly held in the daytime. Men often rode to
them armed, and before leaving too often made them scenes of carousel and unchastened
jocularities. After the wedding came the " infare," with the going from the home of the bride to
the home of the groom. Above everything else that seems to strike the-chord of common
happiness in the society of the time, stands out to the imagination the picture of one of these
processions--a long bridal cavalcade winding slowly along a narrow road through the silent,
primeval forest, now in sunlight, now in the shadow of mighty trees meeting over the way; at the
head the young lovers, so rudely mounted, so simply dressed, and, following in their happy wake,
as though they were the augury of a peaceful era soon to come, a straggling, broken line of the
men and women who had prepared for that era, but should never live to see its appearing.

Allen, James L. The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky and Other Kentucky Articles. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900. 119-20.

The author of The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky and Other Kentucky Stories describes
his encounter with one of these strong women....

In Bell County I spent the day in the house of a woman eighty years old, who was a lingering
representative of a nearly extinct type. She had never been out of the neighborhood of her birth,
knew the mountains like a garden, had whipped men in single-handed encounter, brought down
many a deer and wild turkey with her own rifle, and now, infirm, had but to sit in her cabin door
and send her trained dogs into the depths of the forests to discover the wished-for game. A fiercer
woman I never looked on.

The greater gender equality, and the status of women as "workers" is exemplified in the
settings of equal ground plus hard work in which many husbands and wives met one another.
Such community activities are discussed in this selection...

While subsistence farming remained the predominant means of livelihood along the Big South
Fork, recreation was tied to work activities, especially labor exchange between kin and neighbors.
"Workings" were organized for every task from clearing land, barn raising, and house building, to
cornhusking, bean shelling, and molasses making. Strenuous or technically complex work required
more manpower, more tools and implements, or more specialized expertise than a single nuclear
family could muster; but many of the lighter food preparation tasks could have been accomplished
by individual families. These workings were as much social as economic in function, for they
provided a socially approved setting in which young people could initiate a courtship. For all of
the participants, the burden of monotonous work was relieved by conversation and rewarded by a
big dinner spread by the hostess and other women whose families were present. In the more
liberal households, the working often ended with square dancing. Even the oldest informants
interviewed had not participated in log rollings and barn raisings but had heard stories from their
parents or grandparents which described these events. Apparently the means of accomplishing
heavy work hadchanged by the mid-nineteenth century. Informal mutual aid with unspecified
obligation for future repayment was replaced by some more formal arrangement for hiring extra
manpower. Workers were paid in return services, goods, or cash. But corn huskings and bean
shellings persisted as community-wide events until well after the turn of the century. These
socials are fondly remembered by informants who attended in their youth. "Candy-makings" also
provided a pretext for young people to meet. The idea of a "working" was perpetuated but
removed from its earlier agricultural context. One informant commented perceptively on workings
of various kinds:

All the social activities were connected with the growing and production of food and fiber for the
county's people--to benefit around the neighbors. They'd gather up and have a quilting party,
gather up and around the neighborhood andhave a bean shelling party or a corn shucking party,
and the girls-any girl that found a red ear of corn, everyone in the country would grab her and hug
her and kiss her for it. ....Such things as that was all they had back then for amusement. You
couldn't sit down and listen at a ball game on the radio or see one on the television or something
like that. You made your own amusement, in other words, if you wanted to get out and shoot
squirrels or shoot targets, take a gun out and fire it two or three times and get arrested and
throwed in the calaboose sometimes for it, if you happen to be a little high.
But people 'ud gather up around about and they would have those parties, first one kind and then
another. I know I used to go to 'um around here. We'd make candy with a candy-makin' outfit.
We'd gather in a bunch and buy the material. I forget what kinds candy we made, but it was pretty
good candy and it was made from 30 or 40 cents worth of ingredients. We used to gather up there
at _____'s. He had a store back then, and his girls, two or three of 'um. . .we'd always go up
there. The girls would make the candy and we'd set there and eat candy. It was the only way we
had of meeting other people, was going to some party like that.

Howell, Benita. A Survey of Folklife Along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Knoxville, TN: UT Press, 1981. 159-61.

Both were high, in the Gap just as they had been in the borderlands. Note, for example, the size
of Daniel Boone's family in this selection...

Along this road(the Wilderness Road) Daniel Boone's eldest son James was captured, tortured
and killed by the Indians in October 1773. This was Boone's first attempt to bring his wife
Rebecca and eight children, in company with five other families, into Kentucky. If every family
were as large as that of Daniel's the caravan must have been quite impressive The Boone children
were: James age 17, Squire 15, Susannah 13, Jemima 11, Lavina 7, Rebecca 5, Daniel Morgan 4,
and Jesse Bryan not yet 1. James and seven others had somehow got separated from the main
group, probably by falling behind having to herd the slower moving farm animals. Though James's
group was just a few miles from the main campsite, darkness caught them and they decided to
camp for the night. Before dawn the next morning Indians attacked. A black slave was able to
escape and hide in a pile of drift wood in a nearby creek but close enough to hear the screams of
the unfortunate victims. Seven in the party were killed in this massacre. The grief stricken families
buried their loved ones and retreated "forty miles" to the settlement of Castlewood, Va. on the
Clinch River.

Marriages take place early. They are a fecund race. I asked them time and again to fix upon the
average number of children to a family, and they gave as the result seven. In case of parental
opposition to wedlock, the lovers run off. There is among the people a low standard of morality
in their domestic relations, the delicate privacies of home life having little appreciation where so
many persons, without regard to age or sex, are crowded to~ether within very limit

Allen, James L. The BlueGrass Region of Kentucky and Other Kentucky Articles. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900. 236.

Perhaps in response to the frequency of childbirth, settlers of the Cumberland
Gap, just like their ancestors on the Anglo-Scotch border, had many home remedies and
superstitions about childbirth...

A woman in labor was attended not only by the local midwife but als by a group of female
relatives. The husbands of these women often accom panted their wives and kept the father-to-
be company while he waited. A suggests that the men were not always kept out of the labor
room, and at least one informant had a grandfather who was a male midwife. He claim that male
midwives were not unusual.

After the Stearns camps were established with company doctors in residence or on call, some
women chose to have the services of a professional even though their children continued to be
born at home. Others preferred midwives, who of late, at least in McCreary County, have been
able to tn and receive official state certification. One veteran of sixteen live home births has tried
to persuade her granddaughters to have their babie' at home, but without success. She says: "I had
all my children at home. I reckon that's the reason I'm living, 'cause they'll kill you if they q you at
the hospital. It shortens your days."

It is too simple to conclude that such attitudes toward the haspita which are encountered fairly
frequently, merely reflect a fear of modern medicine. Equally important is the belief that personal
crisis, whate~e its nature, should be faced at home with the support of the immediate family and
the wider community.

Before adequate medical care was readily available, birth and the first few years of childhood were
periods of great uncertainty. A rich body of folk belief helped to allay the anxiety surrounding
birth-and early childhood. Although prenatal care was unknown, mothers-to-be tried to avoid
unusual experiences which they believed might mark their infants After the child was born, it was
carefully examined and its early behavic was observed and regulated in an attempt to determine or
shape its future character. There were many magical cures for childrens' maladies~and ~n good
luck and bad luck omens relating to young children. Morton (1978) provides a well-rounded
sample of such beliefs from East Tennessee. 0lder female informants are familiar with these beliefs
but do not admit tofollowing them personally during pregnancy and child-rearing.

Howell, Benita. A Survey of Folklife Along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Knoxville, TN: UT Press, 1981. 162.

Of home government there is little or none, boys especially setting aside at will parental authority;
but a sort of traditional sense of duty and decorum restrains them by its silent power, and moulds
them into respect. Children while quite young are often plump to roundness, but soon grow thin
and white and meagre like the parents. There is little desire for knowledge or education. The
mountain schools have sometimes less than half a dozen pupils during the few months they are in
session. A gentleman who wanted a coal bank opened, engaged for the work a man passing along
the road. Some days later he learned that his workman was a school-teacher, who, in
consideration of the seventy-five cents a day, had dismissed his academy.

Allen, James L. The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky.... New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900. 238.

can be seen in their reverence for Daniel Boone and other "Representative Corn-
Crackers"

(see John McAfee's book by the same title, 1886).

Such tanistry is also seen
in the following discussion of the "Benjamin" of a "tribe"...

Here, we had occasion to extend our acquaintance with native types. Two young men came
to the hotel, bringing a bag of small, hard peaches to sell. Slim, slab-sided, stomachless, and
serene, mild, and melancholy, they might have been lotos-eaters, only the suggestion of poetry
was wanting. Their unutterable content came not from the lotos, but from their digestion. If they
could sell their peaches, they would be happy ; if not, they would be happy. What they
could not sell, they could as well eat ­ and since no bargain was made on this occasion, they took
chairs on the hotel veranda, opened the bag, and fell to. I talked with the Benjamin of his tribe:
" Is that a good 'coon dog ?"
"A mighty good 'coon dog. I hadn't never seed him whipped by a varmint yit."
" Are there many 'coons in this country ?"
" Several 'coons."
" Is this a good year for 'coons ?"
" A mighty good year for 'coons. The woods is full o' varmints."
" Do 'coons eat corn ?"
"'Coons is bad as hogs on corn, when they git tuk to it."
" Are there many wild turkeys in this country ?"
" Several wild turkeys."
" Have you ever caught many 'coons ?"
" I've cotched high as five 'coons out o' one tree."
" Are there many foxes in this country ?"
" Several foxes."
" What's the best way to cook a 'coon?"
"Ketch him and parbile him, and then put him in cold water and soak him, and then put him in and
bake him."
" Are there many hounds in this country ? "
" Several hounds."
Here, among other discoveries, was a linguistic one--the use of "several" in the sense of a great
many, probably an innumerable multitude, as in the case of the 'coons.

Allen, James L. The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky.... New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900. 223-4.

discussed in this selection...

Monroe Countians were very superstitious in earlier years. This is reflected in the superstitions
and beliefs that have been handed down across the years. These items ranged from death omens
and bad luch superstitions to beliefs about certain signs that were used to forecast the weather.
All entries have been keyed to Volumes VI and VII of The Frank C. Brown Collection of North
Carolina Folklore, edited by Wayland D. Hand.

BAD LUCK, GOOD LUCK, AND DEATH BELIEFS

There were many beliefs that portended good luck, bad luck, or even death. These ideas were
looked upon very seriously. There were many things that the people just wouldn't do if they
could get by without it because they felt to do so would bring bad luck. Then there were other
things that were sure signs of good luck. There were still other things that, if they happened, the
people felt sure someone would die. Listed below are some of these superstitions:

"When you borrow a pocketknife, if it was open, leave it open. If it was closed when you got it,
close it back before giving it back to the person. If you don't do this it will bring bad luck."
Bonnie Reagan. Brown 2872.
"It's bad luck to enter a house through one door and go out through a different door."
Rosa Walden. Brown 2969.
"It's bad luck to walk under a ladder."
Rosa Walden; Bonnie Reagan. Brown 3064.
"If you start on a trip and forget something, it's bad luck to go back and get it."
Myran Goodwill. Brown 3762.
"If a black cat crosses the road in front of you, it's a sign of bad luck."
Bonnie Reagan; Ada Gettings; Oral Page. Brown 5185.
"If a black cat crosses the road in front of you, you can erase the bad luck by making a cross mark
on the window and spitting in it."
Rosa Walden. Brown 3830.
"I you sneeze with food in your mouth, there would be a death in your family."
Oral Page. Brown 4935.
"A wild bird in the house means death." Marion Goodwill.
Brown 5006.
"If strange noises were heard in the house and you didn't know what they were, it was a sign of
death."
Ada Gettings.Brown 5048.
"If your dog howled at midnight, it would mean the death of
someone close to you."
Myran Goodwill. Brown 5207.
"When a hen crowed there would be bad luck if the hen wasn't killed."
Betty Page. Brown 5250.
"There would be bad luck if a rooster crowed after midnight."
Oral Page. Brown 5265.
"When you heard the first dove in the spring, you would have to get a lock of cat's hair, bury it,
and dance on your heels around it three times. If you didn't do this there would be a death in your
family."
Earl Walden. Brown 5298.
"Deaths occur in series of three."
Marion Goodwill.
"Always pick all the beans out of your garden. If any of the old beans come up the next year,
someone will die."
Earl Walden.
"You can hold up a piece of cloth and look toward the evening star and there will be some little
stars around it. The number of stars indicates how many children vou will have. If one of the stars
disappears, one of the children will die."
Melinda Hoffman.
"When sharpening a straight razor, strap it three times on each side. If you don't do this, you'll cut
yourself."
MyranGoodwill.
"If you find a pin on the floor, don't pick it up if the head is pointing toward you because there is
trouble ahead. If the point is toward you, pick it up because trouble is behind you or you'll have
sharp luck."
Earl Walden.
"Always get out of the same side of the bed as when you went to bed. If you don't do this, you'll
have bad luck."
Willie Montell.
"It would bring bad luck to take the ashes out of a stove on Friday."
Oral Page.
"If a woman came to your house on New Year's Day, you would have bad luck. But, if a man
came in first, they would bring good luck."
Hazel Montell.
"A crowing hen and a whistling woman will come to some bad luck."
Ova Kirk.
"If you hang mistletoe over the door, the first unmarried person that walks under it will be the
first to get married."
Rosa Walden.
"Never rock a rocking chair unless you're sitting in it. If you do, it means you're due a whipping. "
Marian Goodwill.
"If you've got a dog, just clip the end hairs off his tail and bury them under your doorstep and he'll
never leave home."
Lank Kirkpatrick.
"Always get married when the hands of the clock point up so the love will be in its cup."
Myran Goodwill.

also reflect the blend of lack of reverence and religion of the peoples of the borderlands
and backcountry. Death, and religion, were so intimately a part of their lives that these sacred
realms became blended with the everyday. Several examples are described in the following selection

Some of the folkways of eastern Kentucky people have been stereotyped as quaint and primitive
and unlawful. A few only can be touched on here and little more than defined.

One of these customs has been termed funeralizing. But it rightfully should be called the more
sacred and traditional term - memorializing. In the mountains there were a few churches but not
enough pastors to go round. There were fewer trained preachers than in more populous regions.
The people had to be served by the famous circuit riders. These made their rounds in late summer
and fall well enough, but in winter and in the busy early spring they could not visit the flooded and
shut-in valleys. But life went on in thesevalleys: an elderly brother passed on, and a mother died in
childbirth, a couple began housekeeping by parental consent or on the strength of papers from the
squire. Children grew into their teens and began to "run wild." In the late spring and summer the
ministers would return to their charges. They would baptize the young, hold memorial funerals for
the deceased, and hold religious weddings for those couples who already had families started.
The funeral services, more sacred and touching than any other events, often occupied an all-day
preaching "with dinner on the ground." Very often in the congregation a man (more rarely a
woman) would hear the virtues of his dead wife praised while his new wife sat by his side.

Memorializing eventually became an annual affair in conjunction with the Annual Meetings and
Associations of the sects. And growing up with these three-day gatherings was another custom,
that of the jockey ground, or just good old-fashioned hoss swapping. The people attending the
Associations from miles around came in wagons and ahorseback. On a day in the afternoon, or
throughout the whole event for that matter, the men would choose a bottom piece of ground of
several acres and trot their nags and mules up and down, calling out, "How'll ye swap?" Men
could be seen looking into the mouths of horses, taking little jog-trots up and down the
dusty field, clapping the nag's rump with his willow switch, putting harness on mules and making
them pull a log up and down the bottom. Of course there were many other kinds of trading, such
as in livestock, work swapping, dog chasing, and even a little knife throwing swapping from the
fist, sight unseen.

Another religious observance developed soon after the Civil War. The mountain people were
among the first to set aside a day "to decorate the graves." This day became fixed on May 30
or the nearest Sunday to it. Earlier in the week the menfolk would go to the graveyard and clean
off the creepvine and shrubs and remound the sunken graves. Soon as daylight on Sunday the
mothers would rise and send their children to pick the flowers of the field and around the house
and to cut green shrubs from the hillsides and along the streams. The women would pack every
basket on the place with flowers and bulbs to transplant and all the pies, cakes, fried chicken,
and pickles and make their way to the meeting house. After Sunday school the congregation
would adjourn to the graveyard on the point. There under the largest clump of sassafras trees the
preacher would take his stand and talk in a thin wavering voice about "this land of trial and
tribulation, where we all totter over the earth until we lay this body down." And after naming
those who had come there to rest within the year he would continue, "And we must prepare to
meet those who have gone on before and join our loved ones there with no more sorrow and
where our tears will be wiped forever from our eyes.¯ Sometime between twelve and two the
ministers would "give way" and the people would wind about among the graves scattering their
flowers and setting out their shoots of evergreen and roses. Then they would leave the sacred
grounds and have dinner together on the hillside.

a discussion of more church-going activities in the Gap follows...

CHURCH-GOING ACTIVITIES

"People would drive far miles to church in an old road wagon. First of all they would drive in an
old ox cart; maybe if it was a large family they would hitch a yoke of oxen to the wagon and drive
for several miles in a road wagon pulled by a yoke of oxen. I still have an ox yoke, but I don't
have any oxen. After the days of the oxen and cattle played out, they got to using horses and
mules to pull the wagons with. We would all crawl in the wagon when we started to church and
my dad would pick up every lady along the road as long as there was room for anyone to stand.
Everybody wanted to ride and we had a lot of fun, now.

"People didn't really dress up to go to church like they do now. I remember they just wore shirts
and overalls. They had their "Sunday-go-to-meeting overalls" as they were called. It would be a
new pair. Their old ones they wore to go to work in on the farm. The new ones were held in
reserve to wear to church. If a feller had a new pair to go to church in, he was really dressed up.
A lot of times they would get between a rock and hard place and couldn't afford a new pair of
overalls and they would have to wear their old ones to church. I have seen some at church with
their old ones on. They would be clean, but they would be patched. But they were just as good as
anybody else, I reckon. That is the way everybody felt about it, that clothes didn't make the man.
This day and time some people seem to entertain the idea that if a man is well-dressed, he is all
right every other way. But as the old saying goes, "Clothes doesn't make the man."
Oral Page.

+ + + +

"Now don't call my name. It might not be so good. It was about three miles. We had a big old
mare we called Dunbar after a big Dunbar boat. And my mother would get on that horse and one
of us would get on her lap and I usually rode behind next to her and another one 'ud get behind
me. They had preaching about once aJmonth except the season they had protractive meetings,
maybe two, three or everyone of 'em were Baptists! There was an old school house at Center
Point. They would meet in that. Everybody sang. One time I remember going and there was just
three women there and men, and not a one of them men would lead the singing; and she led it off
singing "Amazing Grace, how sweet it sounds." The preacher preached a long time. Sometimes a
lot would leave before it was over. They baptised in the river. Everybody went to the baptizing."
Anonymous elderly female.

"Well, they call them meetings and revivals, and everybody went to church. Young people, all
young people went, cause there won't no other place to go. And after church, well the boys would
line up on the outside, and as thou girls come out the door, well they'd walk up to 'em. The boy
would say to the girl, "The star, the moon shine is bright; may I see ya home tonight? " And the
girl would, if she wanted the boy to go with her, why she'd say, "The stars shine too; I don't
care if ya do." Then that meant, that meant, that they had a date with her, with each other. So he'd
walk her home. They didn't have no cars, they .just walked along the road."
RoyDecker.

yet another perspective on religion in the Gap is given in this selection...

Amid a rural people, also, no class of citizens is more influential than the clergy, who go about as
the shepherds of the right ; and without doubt in Kentucky, as elsewhere, ministerial ideals have
wrought their effects on taste in architecture. Perhaps it is well to state that this is said broadly,
and particularly of the past. The Kentucky preachersduring earlier times were a fiery, zealous, and
austere set, proclaiming that this world was not a home, but wilderness of sin, and exhorting their
people to live under the awful shadow of Eternity. Beauty in every material form was a peril, the
seductive garment of the devil. Wellnigh all that made for ‘sthetic culture was put down, and, like
frost on venturesome flowers, sermons fell on beauty in dress, entertainment, equipage, houses,
church architecture, music, the drama, the opera everything. The meek young spirit was led to the
creek or pond, and perhaps the ice was broken for her baptism. If, as she sat in the pew, any
vision of her chaste loveliness reached the pulpit, back came the warning that she would some day
turn into a withered hag, and must inevitably be " eaten of worms." What wonder if the sense of
beauty pined or went astray and found itself completely avenged in the building of such churches?
And yet there is nothing that even religion more surely demands than the fostering of the sense of
beauty within us, and through this also we work towards the civilization of the future.

Allen, James L. The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky.... New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900. 209-10.

this selction analyzes the religion of the region, as well

Many Big South Fork communities disappeared from the map when most of residents moved
away, their stores and post offices closed, and their one-room schools closed. The institution that
remained most vigorous in the face of community dissolution was the church. As long as some
residents remain to form a congregation nucleus, the small rural churches continue to function. An
overview of church history and belief will help to explain these churches survive in spite of small
congregations, limited activities, and the attractions of larger, more active churches in the towns.

The denominations represented by churches in the Big South Fork area include Baptist,
Methodist, Presyterian, Congregational, Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah'sWitness, Church of
God, Church of Christ, Church of the Nazarine, Mormon, and unaffiliated Pentecostal and
Holiness groups. A majority of the churches and church members are Baptist. Historically,
Baptists dominated the immediate BSFNRRA area and have continued to do so. For these
reasons, the Baptists will be the focus of this discussion.

Because Baptist doctrine and church organization inherently preclude a single invariant theology
and church doctrine, conflicting schools of thought have flourished and left their traces in
frequently encountered denominational labels--Regular Baptist, Separate Baptist, United
Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Free Will Baptist, and Primitive Baptist. Still other labels are
encountered elsewhere in the South but are not common in the Big South Fork area. An
historical overview will help to explain the church names which are most common near the
recreation area.

History of the Baptist Denomination

A few English Baptists settled in colonial Virginia and North Carolina. They styled themselves
General or Armenian Baptists and adhered to the doctrine of free will (Sweet 1931). The Great
Awakening revival movement began in New England in the 1730's although it did not gain a
foothold in Appalachia until the last decade of the eighteenth century (Boles 1972; Johnson
1955). The New England revival greatly swelled the ranks of the Baptists; in keeping with Great
Awakening theology, the new convertswere Calvinistic predestinarians rather than advocates of
free will. These were Congregationalists who were reformed by revival spirit first to become
"New Lights" and later to form Separate Baptist congregations when they gave up infant baptism
in favor of adult baptism. Soon after 1750, Baptist converts began migrating southward from
New England where the Separate Baptists were strong and from Pennsylvania where the Regular
Baptists had an active association. The Regulars shared a Calvinistic outlook with the Separates
but were less revivalistic and evangelical.

Sweet (1931: 9-10) describes the antagonism the Separates aroused when they came in contact
with the General Baptists in Virginia and North Carolina.

The older Baptists in Virginia and North Carolina, as well as other denominations in contact with
them, generally disapproved way of the Separates. This disapproval was largely based upon the
pulpit mannerisms and type of preaching generally followed by the evangelists, and by the effects
they produced upon the Congregation. . .One of the peculiar mannerisms developed by the
preachers was the "holy whine," a sing song method of speaking which seems to have arisen with
outdoor preaching, and which continued to be practiced by the less educated Baptist ministers of
the frontier for many years. . .The Separate Baptists had the reputation for being an ignorant and
illiterate set. As is generally the case, the people attracted to the kind of meetings conducted by
the Separate Baptist evangelists represented the lower classes economically and educationally.

Membership gains by the Separate Baptists durinq the 1760's and 1770's were in part the result of
a popular reaction against civil persecution of Separate Baptist preachers and of general support
for separation of Church and State after the Revolutionary War. Both Regular and Separate
Baptists emigrated from Virginia and North Carolina to Kentucky and Tennessee when western
settlement began. The Regular Baptists established more churches in Kentucky, and the Separate
Baptists established more churches in Tennessee. Soon after the turn of the century, however, a
new movement to achieve a compromise between the Calvinistic and Armenian positions touched
both states. Adherents to the compromise formed the UnitedBaptist Church in 1807-8 (Sweet
1931: 22-27).

Meanwhile, Andrew Fuller had organized the first Baptist missionary society in England in 1792.
Sweet (1931: 61) reports that the missionary message was at first warmly received in Kentucky
and Tennessee. The Great Awakening spread to Appalachia through the efforts of circuit-riding
preachers imbued with missionary fervor. However, by the1820's controversy over missionary
activity began to develop, and churches split in consequence. Anti-mission sentiment, which
Sweet (1931: 58) interprets asa frontier phenomenon, was especially strong in Tennessee. The
anti-mission Baptists rejected the notion that clergy needed special education or that they should
be paid salaries. The protest was also directed against what seemed t• be a trend toward more
rigid and centralized church organization. On theological grounds, the anti-mission congregations
took an extreme Calvinist position that viewed any proselytizing as presumptious tampering with
God 's foreordained will for each individual. These views were shared by the Primitive or
"Hardshell" Baptists, the Reformer Baptists who were followers of Alexander Campbell, and the
Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Baptists, who subscribed to Daniel Parker's view that each individual was
born with either the seed of good or of evil, and hence was either elect or damned from birth
(Sweet 1931: 67-72).

Sanderson's (1958) history of Scott County sheds some light on the history of the Baptist Church
in the immediate Big South Fork area. The United Baptist Church was organized in the area in
1842 and flourished until the 1880's. At that time, controversy over the mission issue caused
Scott County Baptists to split into Separate and Missionary Baptists. At present, Missionary
Baptist Churches are found in the towns and along High way 27, but further west in the heart of
the Big South Fork area, congregations are either Separate or United Baptist.

Some communities have both United and Separate Baptist churches, suggesting factional splits
in the past, but church members now do not identify any major theological differences and freely
attend one another's services. A Separate Baptist preacher who was asked to explain the origin of
the label "Separate" referred to the scriptural injunction, "Be ye separate." He interpreted this
verse as a guide for contemporary behavior, not in terms of church history. A United Baptist lay
member volunteered his understanding of the difference between Separate and United Baptists:
the Separate Baptists believe that a person can be saved today and lostagain tomorrow, so they
permit repreated baptisms, the United Baptists believe in one baptism.

Religious Belief

Despite their past or present doctrinal differences, all Baptists subscribe to these basic principles:
1) conversion as a condition of church membership, 2) adult baptism by immersion, 3) individual
responsibility to God, and 4) a congregational rather than a centralized form of church
governance .

Encouragement of personal intrepretation of the Bible and congregational autonomy have
insulated the Appalachian churches from outside influencesand have splintered congregations
within the area. Parker (1970) sees in these circumstances a fertile field for the formation
of folk religion. Folk religion is evident in widespread regional observances like Decoration Day;
in less common practices like faith-healing; and in the rare but heavily publicized snake handling
practiced by some Appalachian Holiness sects (see La Barre 1962, Kane 1974). Kane's work and
some sketchy informationa obtained from informants suggests that snake handling may persist on
the Cumberland Plateau even though both Tennessee and Kentucky have outlawed it. But there is
no evidence to suggest that it is practiced in the Holiness churches near the Big South Fork.

Individualism and personalism in religion do not encourage regular church attendance and
participation in church-sponsored social programs. The activities of the rural churches reflect the
limited resources of their small congregations but also a traditional resistance to participation in
organized social groups. The more conservative congregations frown upon associating sports and
other common youth program with the church.

The Role of the Preacher and The Lay Member

James Kerr in his analysis of Appalachian religion (1979:71) argues that congregations want
preaching, not pastoralism. The preacher who is a neighbor, kinsman, and who works at the same
tasks as the rest of the community during the week is a more credible figure than the outsider
specialist. Again, the necessity of using part-time, unpaid ministers because of limited financial
resources is turned into a virtue.

The call to preach in a rural Baptist church may come toanyone, literate or illiterate, but the
novice preacher must gain congregational approval before he is confirmed in his work and
ordainedto preach by his fellow preachers. The call has been a stimulus for many preachers to
learn to read or to improve their reading in order to study the Bible in depth. Nevertheless, many
preachers express the belief that they are divinely inspired during their sermons; they do not
prepare before they get up to speak. They generally begin quietly with a particular Bible text, but
when they "get going good,"they fall into the "holy whine" noted by Sweet and begin to arouse
affirmative responses from the congregation. Despite the extemporaneous content of sermons,
the oratorical style employed is highly stylized, and preachers acknowledge that as novices they
modeled their preaching after successful preachers whom they admired.

The same egalitarian tendencies which favor the local part-time preacher also promote full and
equal participation by lay members in services and church affairs. Their participation takes the
form of group prayers, and lengthy personal testimony in addition to the affirmations interjected
into the preacher's sermon. Each congregation as a democratic body conducts its own business
affairs. In the early days, this function extended beyond church business into the regulation of
members' conduct. This aspect of church life will be discussed more fully in the chapter on social
control (Chapter Seven).

Church Life

Some of the smaller rural churches no longer have a preacher available for services every week
but must participate in a circuit with other churches. Circuit churches may hold services only once
a month, and this situation encourages visiting at nearby churches between times. Regular services
are held Sunday mornings or evenings, and prayer meetings may also be held on Wednesday
evenings. Congregational business meetings and association meetings are often held on Saturday
evenings. Special Sunday School programs for the children are seldom provided by the smaller
rural churches. One Preacher rationalized this lack with the observation that Sunday School
couldn't save anybody; only responding to the preached Word could do that. Emotional
conversion rather than a prolongedprogram of religious instruction is the prerequisite for baptism.

Regular weekly and monthly church services and meetings may be attended by only a small core
of faithful members, but the revivals which last a full week or longer draw larger crowds to the
churches and may produce conversions to swell the membership rolls. Most revivals are now
sponsored by a particular church and held in its building, but tent meetings and brush arbor
meetings are not unknown. Kerr (1979) identifies revivalism and emotional fundamentalism as
important characteristics of Appalachian religion and notes that church participation which may
lag at other times of the year is stimulated by revivals. Perhaps the Pentecostal and Holiness sects
which currently are gaining members throughout Appalachia are successful because they manage
to satisfy these emotional needs more continuously than the older churches.

The following description of the old-time revival matches informant memories in most
particulars, but shouting was another characteristic they mentioned. One woman vividly recalls
having to climb up on the bench as a small child in order to get out of the shouters' way. She
observed that shouting was expected behavior and not always spontaneous, at least this was true
of one old lady in the church who always tied her bonnet tightly on her head before beginning to
shout.

Many of these early revivals followed along the camp-meeting type of procedure. Whether or not
the ministers could carry a tune in a sack" they usually led off with a solo. . .The whole procedure
was democratic in keeping with the ideas of the frontier people. Every minister participated in the
services which held three or four hours. The entire congregation participated in the singing, and
Christians and sinners joined in mass prayer. Some minister or devout man or woman usually led
off with the prayer at the mourner's bench, but all joined in as the spirit led them. Sometimes fifty
would be praying aloud at one time. . . The revivals usually lasted two to six weeks, depending
upon the interest taken. At the close of the revivals the new converts were taken into the church.
All the converts came forward, testified, and expressed their desire to join the churchand be
baptized. The baptizings were held in May the next spring. These were called the "May Meetings"
(Sanderson 1958: 117).

One informant described May Meetings and Association Meetings recalled from childhood. The
May Meetings she likened to Easter because everyone attended and the women and girls decked
themselves out in new Sunday clothes. The association meetings were held in early fall, usually
September. Congregations loosely affiliated together into an association conducted their mutual
business at that time, but the week-long meeting also provided an occasion for the host
community to entertain and hear all of the visiting preachers.

Another special church observance provides a time for former members of a congregation to
reunite, whether they have moved away from the area or simply transferred membership from the
family's church to one of the larger town churches. These reunions, called Homecomings, are held
at each church sometime during the summer. There is a special church serviceand dinner on the
grounds. Tables, sometimes covered by asshed, can be seen near many church buildings in the
area; these have been installed to accommodate dinners on the grounds.

Many younger families in the Big South Fork area now are active in the larger town churches
which are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. These churches have trained, full-time
ministers and a full program of activities, including youth programs for the children. Research
conducted throughout Appalachia suggests that more affluent familiesaffiliate with more
modernist, less fundamentalist churches while the Holiness sects attract the very poor (Photiadis
and Maurer 1974; Garrard 1970).

Most of the BSFNRRA residents surveyed are church members, but many do not participate
regularly in church activites. Extremely religious individuals sometimes rationalize their lack of
participation- in organized church activities by stating that none of the churches nowadays strictly
follows the Bible. Because their religion is oriented toward personal commitment rather than
participation in group ritual, Bible-reading and listening to religious broadcasts are very important
parts of their lives Some of the gospel programs heard locally have a national or regional
distribution, but the most popular are broadcasts of local preachers an singing groups. Although
many church buildings attract small congregations, the invisible radio congregationsare large and
strong.

Howells, Benita. A Survey of Folklife Along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Knoxville, TN: UT Press, 1981.

The backcountry did not only have its own forms of religion; it was also distinct in its beliefs about magic, carried over from the Anglo-Scotch borders.

They brought along their beliefs and remedies, signs and
superstitions, and made a few observations of their own. There
was a belief in witchcraft in early America, brought from the Old
World. These beliefs had lost their force by the time eastern
Kentucky was settled. Some items remained and some
countercharms and witch doctors were used to neutralize them.
Nowhere in the hills is there a record of witch trials and
executions. Some people still tell stories of bewitchment-dogs
that are turned on the back trail, cows that will not give milk,
butter that will not come in the churn, a sickness that will not be
cured ( see stories 34, 35, and 36 ).

Beliefs of various kinds were sometimes wholly accepted,
some partly accepted, some not at all. The use of iron under the
bed to cut childbed pain, horseshoes over the door to ward away
witches, pokers heated in the fireplace to scare away hawks-
these disappeared early and are now barely remembered. One
old man of 77 told me about being passed through a split tree
trunk to be cured of the phthisic. Omens and weather signs have
persisted longer and only now are fading away. Their ancient
omens have probably been re-inforced by their experiences with
the Indians back on earlier frontiers. An owl hooting, a rooster
crowing, especially in the doorway, a dog howling were signs of
bad luck or of a death in the family. Weather signs of course
were handed down from the Old Country and from the New
England almanacs, and the almanac is still sold or given away in
country stores. They gave the signs of the zodiac, a year's
coverage of the weather, crop dates, when to plant according
to the phases of the moon, eclipses, sayings, proverbs and
remedies. The mountain folk adapted, improved upon these
written records by their own observations. They studied the
direction of the wind and rain clouds, saw the animals' habits and
customs, plant and tree growth and were able to make good use
of these experiences. The largest collection of Kentucky
superstitions (many from the hills) totalling about 4000 is in the
volume Kentucky Superstitions by Lucy and Daniel Thomas.

There is a persistent and continuing belief in ghosts, walking
spirits, haints, and revenants in the region. They are seen as
shapes in the road or near graveyards, along stretches of winding
creek road and at lonely spots, or where someone lost his life, or
in rooms where people died. Foul play leaves the most grisly and
lasting spot. Many ghosts are to be seen, some to be heard, some
to be felt. Ghosts sometimes walk and have nothing to say, others
tell the person that all will be well in the other world, or warn him
to stop a certain way of doing, or to help a certain person, or
even to go right and return to church. The longer stories of the
ghost who wants to see that his murderer is brought to justice, or
to see that his family gets his property, or to tell where money is
hidden are from Old World archetypes. These in many versions
are told throughout the mountains See Nos 4, 5, and
especially 16).

In Monroe County, just as in most other rural areas across the nation
our former generations didn't have access to very much medical
technology. There were a few doctors scattered across the area, but they
were usually located in the communities, towns, or trade centers. The
people that lived away from these areas had an especially hard time
obtaining the services of a doctor.

Due to this lack of medical services, the people in these rural areas
developed their own beliefs as to how to prevent and cure their diseases.
Mr. M. S. Agers illustrated the importance of these remedies when he
was talking about a homemade linament freauently used made by his
mother: "We had to use it. That was all we had. We could be dead by the
time we got to a doctor."

These remedies have been passed on from generation to generation and
many are still in use by some people today.

"When a woman was in labor, if you put an axe under
her bed, it would cut the pain in two.' Earl Walden. Brown
45.

'Many times a mother, having no baby food would
chew the baby's food and then put it in the 6aby's mouth."
Rosa Walden.

"If a baby was fretful and crying, they would fix a
sugar tit for it. They would put sugar in little bags and
let the baby suck on it to pacify him." Rosa Walden. Brown 80.

"If a child wets the bed, feed him fried mouse the next
morning and he won't wet the bed any more." Emma
McDonald. Brown 279.

"Give babies catnip tea to make them sleep good. " Kate
Holland.

"If a child had the thrash (sore mouth), they would take
it to some person that had never seen his own father. This
person would blow his breath into the child's mouth to cure
the thrash." Rosa Walden. Brown 413.

"Set a jug of corn whiskey on top of roots, herbs, and
barn and drink it off of them and you won't get sick. " Oral
Page. Brown 792-94.

"If a young boy had asthma, they would stand him up
against the wall and mark where the top of his head came.
As he grew above this mark, the asthma would leave
him." Lank Kirkpatrick. Brown 829.

"Sassafras tea is good for the blood." Kate Holland.
Brown 895.

"If a person had the chickennox, he should go out in front
of the hen house and let the ch~ckens all come out the door
over him." Rosa Walden. Brown 1022.

"Wet a paper and put it around an onion and put it in the
ashes where there'd be enough heat to bake it. It creates
enough juice that you can mix it with sugar and give it to a
baby for a cold." Elzady White; Emma McDonald. Brown
1113.

"Polecat grease would clear up a cold." Emma
McDonald.

"Wear a greasy rag around the neck for a cold. This was
a rag saturated with a mixture of tallow or lard, kerosene,
campher, and turpentine." John McDonald.

"Wintergreen tea was good for a bad cold." John
Dossey.

"Ground ivy would make babies break out with hives."
Elzady White. Brown 1689.

"Poke berry root was used for the itch. The patient was
bathed in the water the root was boiled in." Emma
McDonald. Brown 1750.

"Rub sulphur and sorghum molasses on the itch anc
wear it for nine days." John Dossey.

"Watermelon seed tea was good for the kidneys. "
Emma McDonald. Brown 1765.

"If a person has a nosebleed, put a pair of scissors in the
bed with him." Oral Page. Brown 1901.

"Put scissors on the back of your neck to stop a
nosebleed." John McDonald. Cf. Brown 1901.

"To keep a nose from bleeding, put a hole through a
dime, tie a string through it and wear it around your
neck." Rosa Walden. Brown 1906.

"Put a dime under the nose to stop a nosebleed. " Emma
McDonald.

"Pour whiskey on red, ripe poke berries and take it for
arthritis." Kate Holland. Brown 2015.

"For rheumatism, get a piece of copper wire and tie it
around the arm." Oral Page. Brown 2053.

"Red oak bark ooze, made by boiling red oak bark, was
used to keep down swelling." Kate Holland. Brown 2324.

"To get rid of a wart, go somewhere and steal a dish rag
and rub it over the wart." Rosa Walden. Brown 2597.

"Pick a wart until it bleeds. Get a little stick and break it
in the middle. Get a little blood on the stick and go hide it
and don't tell anyone where you hid it and the wart will go
away." Emma McDonald.

"To stop the hiccoughs, put your nase down in a paper
sack and breathe in it." Ward Curtis.

"Corn silk tea was good for the kidneys." Emma
McDonald.

"Pumpkin seed tea was good for the kidneys." John
Dossey.

"Take castor oil for bad colds." J. T. Brown.

"In case of an injury where the person is bleeding, put a
chopping axe under the bed to stop the bleeding." Oral
Page.

"Put a piece of fat meat on a bee sting to keep it from
swelling." Ward Curtis.

"Don't let a baby nurse its mother while the mother is
hot. The milk will be hot and make the baby sick." Rosa
Walden.

Illness brought forth various expressions of community support. Whenever economically
productive members of a family were disabled, neighbors took over their farm or household
chores, brought in prepared food, helped with child care, or did whatever else was needed to keep
the family functioning. If the patient required intensive nursing, neighbors spelled the women of
the immediate fam~ly at this task. Whether or not their help was needed to provide
round-the-clock nursing, neighbors considered it a duty to visit the sick.

Local healers were the primary medical consultants. This was universally true before improved
transportation and the Stearns company doctors made professional medical care reasonably
accessible. However, even after trained doctors were available, many families continued to prefer
home remedies and the advice of local healers. The doctor was called only for the most serious
problems or after less drastic forms of treatment had been exhausted without success.

Local medical practitioners included herbalists who treated a variety of ills, midwives, and
home dentists who pulled teeth with pliers mace by the local blacksmith or occasionally supplied
by some overworkedphysician who hoped avoid practicing dentistry. Although every family knew
the most common herbal remedies and grew or collected materials needed for the common house-
hold remedies, each community had its specialist whose knowledge was more extensive. This
person could be called upon to give advice or prepare special medicines when necessary. A
number of the experts traced their special knowledge of herbal medicine back to Indian ancestors.

One Indian doctor, a man who called himself Dr. Medico, seems to have
set up a commercial practice near the Wayne-McCreary County line around the
turn of the century. He may even have traveled into Fentress County to practice on occasion,
but he was exceptional. Most lay healers worked close to home and took no pay for their services.
Rather, they could expect favors in return through the community system of mutual aid. In late
years when commercial transactions began to supplant labor exchange, lay medical
practitioners still did not accept payment because they knew they might be liable to criminal
presecution for practicing medicine without a license.

Informants' recollections of early medical practices include a sketch of the country doctor's life as
well as anecdotes from the patient's view. One may infer from these reminiscences that most
doctors were conentious but nevertheless limited in their training and in the equipment
Ipharmaceuticals available to them. In this context, primary reliance local practitioners made
technological sense. It also made sense soly as an expression of community
values. Wherever possible, the city served its own needs through mutual aid, a practice that
simtaneously strengthened community bonds while it minimized unnecessary terference from
outsiders. Even today, many old-timers consider capitalization a real
misfortune. While they recieve better medical care, they are separated from home and family
during their personal crisis, the very time when support from home and family traditionally have
been most important and most reassuring.

Howell, Benita. A Survey of Folklife Along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Knoxville, TN: UT Press, 1981. 164-5.

The grain is ground at their homes in a hand tub-mill, or one made by setting the nether
millstone in a bee-gum, or by cutting a hole in a puncheon-log and sinking the stone into it.
There are, however, other kinds of mills: the primitive little water-mill, which may be con-
sidered almost characteristic of this region; in a few places improved water-mills, and small
steam-mills. It is the country of mills, farm-houses being furnished with one as with coffee-
pot or spinning- wheel. A simpler way of preparing corn for bread than by even the
hand-mill is used in the late summer and early autumn, while the grain is too hard for eating
as roasting-ears, and too soft to be ground in a mill. On a board is tacked a piece of tin
through which holes have been punched from
the under side, and over this tin the ears are
rubbed, producing a coarse meal, of which
"gritted bread " is made. Much pleasure and
much health they get from their "gritted
bread," which is

sweet and wholesome for a
hungry man.

Allen, James L. The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky.... New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900. 232-3.

delion, and bullweed. Wild sage rather than
cultivated sage sometimes was used to season game and as an
ingredient in sausage and souse meat. Roots were used almost exclusively for
medicine; however, meadow garlic may have been used in sausage
making, and one informant reported collecting and roasting the Indian
turnip, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, when she was a girl.

Beechnuts, black walnuts, hickory nuts, and chestnuts were gathered in the fall, and chestnut mast
also fattened the semi-wild, semi-domestic hogs ranging free in the woods. Old timers condtend
that the chestnut-fattened hogs yielded better flavored pork than animals finished off on grain. The
chestnuts are no more, but black walnuts are still a popular wild food.

Among the wild fruits and berries collected both in the past and
presently are persimmon, papaw, blackberry, huckleberry, frost grape,
and muscadine. The two wild grapes are quite sour but produce flavorful jellies. Muscadines
used to thrive in the cleared areas along the O & W railroad tracks, but reforestation has
destroyed that former habitat.

Various plants were used to prepare table beverages. Sassafras
tea was brewed from sassafras root bark; spicewood bark and twigs,
and the leaves of bee balm, also known as Oswego tea, were steeped for
table beverages. Many other teas were prepared for medicinal purposes.
Persimmons were turned into mildly alcholoic persimmon beer. First the
persimmons were baked in corn bread. Then the bread was crumbled
into a crock, covered with water, and allowed to ferment for a few days.

Big South Fork residents have been able to use a variety of substitutes for refined sugar. Honey
and sorghum molasses are sti11 quite popular, but in the early decades of this century, maples
were tapped and the sap was boiled down into maple syrup and sometimes maple
sugar. In the process of logging out the area's hardwoods, some fine old sugar
groves were lost. An additional natural sweet for children was the balsam
exuded from sweet gum trees. This balsam was chewed like chewing gum...

Moonshine is of course the most notorious of all Appalachian beverage. Pure corn whiskey
was made at home following procedures quite like those
used by ancestors of the Big South Fork settlers hundreds
of years earlie in the British Isles. The sweet mash
whiskey was kept on hand for medic) purposes, as a general
tonic, and for hospitality. Short-cuts that produce an
inferior and often dangerous product were introduced once a
cash economy created a booming market for whiskey. This
discussion with two informant explains the differences
between the two k

inds of whiskey.

A: Why, they used to make whiskey around our part of
the country th everybody nearly made it. They made
some good moonshine whiskey then. We'd sprout the
malt and go to the barn and dig us a hole in the
stables where the manure was--it couldn't never
freeze-and bury that box down in there. It'd hold
water. We'd put th corn in there--it'd have a lid
to it, you see. We'd go every d or two and put
warm water in that, and that's the way we sprout
the malt corn. See, we had to sorta watch about
the revenue too, you know, so whenever we let
that lid back down, we'd thro some stalks and ol'
hay over that, and may be a mule in there ( the
stall). That's the way we sprouted that malt
corn. Then you got one of these sausage grinders
and run it through that, then was ready to go in
that still cap. They'd run a quill down thr that
cap and drink that (the still beer). It's good,
law yeah. See, it'd form a cap on top of it. You
could tell when it got to work. The cap would get
thinner and thinner. Directly it'd break up, and
she's ready to go in the pot and go to boiling it.
They wouldn't put no sugar in that first. That
was called sweet mash, that first. That was the
corn likker, nothing in but just the corn.
Whenever it got boiled off, it got weaker and weaker.
Whenever it got down to what we called backin's,
then just empty that pot into barrels, and that's
when they'd put t, sugar in it. And it'd make more
the next time than it did the time, but it
wouldn't be as good.

B: That sugar whiskey's what gave people hard liver
and everything, but that corn likker, old people
used to drink that. They'd keep it in the home and drink it for medicine, maybe.
Keep it on the table and all the family had to take
a swallow every morning to keep 'em healthy. But
after they got to putting that sugar in, made 'em
sick, poisoned 'em.

A: Gave 'em jake leg.

B: Made their liver get hard.

A: The revenuers got so hard on 'em they wouldn't half
make it. Made it on an old thump keg, they called it.
They didn't run it through much of a copper pipe and take that grease (verdigris mixed with
corn oil, called bardy grease) out of it.

B. My grandmother said that the way her daddy made it, he d take a yarn sock and put that pipe,
let that whiskey run through that yarn sock, and she said there'd be a great big ball of that
oldgreen stuff come off that copper. That was poison,
and they'd (makers of bad whiskey) just let it go down in, pay
no attention to it.

Here is another informant's account of whiskey making after
widespread bootlegging, fueled by demand from Streans miners
with cash on hand, became the order of the day in river
gorge communities just across the state line in Tennessee.

Did you know that cane seed would make whiskey just the same as
corn? This man had a still up yonder and wanted me to put up
some with him. He had two big homemade barrels, riv out of chestnut
flats big at the bottom and sloped up at the top, wooden hoops on 'em,
heft 90 gallon apiece. Well, we put a bushel of meal in them, made two
run out of that; the still held 45 gallons. Well, one day he said, "Let's make some out of cane
seed. We both had a big cane patch, had a barn and crib oiled full of seeds. I said, "That stuff
won't make no whiskey."
"Yes, it will too."
I had a big grist mill in the creek there. We flew in and shelled
us off a lot of these cane seeds and we'd go there and grind the seed of a night, then run some
corn back through to keep people from knowing.

We worked them up, and boys, it turned up the strongest
whiskey, shootfire. And he then wanted to put some sugar in it. I never had put no sugar in
whiskey; you'd just cook the slop back and put you sugar in it.
I said, "They won't nobody buy that ol' sugar whiskey."
"Yes," said, "they will. I know a fellow'll take it every bit for $3.50 a gallon."
Well, we got a pair of mules and rode out here to Oneida and went across the railroad there to
old man Bailey Cross s and bought 100 pounds of sugar, cost six dollars. We divided that and put
it in a meal sack, each one of us just like we had a turn of meal. Throwed
it across the mules and carried it back. We cooked them two big barrels
back--the slop--divided that sugar, put fifty pounds in each barrel.
Boy, that stuff worked off there and gosh, that' d gone two and three
gallons of whiskey to the run, a hundred proof.
You could buy your malt up here. Used to be a big store up here, Shannon Brothers, they got to
ordering this barley malt. It was $7.00 a hundred back then, but a gallon of that would work a
fifty gallon barrel just rolling. Used to have to sprout the malt out of corn. It'd take you several
days to sprout this malt, then you had to grind hit on a sausage mill.

Howell, Benita. Survey. 108-10.

FOX AND GEESE

"This was a game played on a large wooden board or
cardboard. Two types of objects were used. White corn and
yellow corn, corn and buttons, and so on. The game was
played by two people. Each person would place two of one
kind of object on their side of the board. They were
desiganated as the foxes.

"The other objects were scattered on the other parts of
the board. They were the geese. The fox was supposed to
get from one side of the board to the other. He may remove
the geese bY jumping them as in checkers, or he may move
along the lines ~f the geese aren't in the way." Emma
McDonald.

BALL GAME

"You're runnin' and they try to hit ye. If they hit ve, they
score. If they don't hit ye, ye can pick the ball up and throw
it back at 'em. What we called a ball was just made out of old socks.
We'd ravel old socks out and wrap them up and make a
ball. Sometimes we'd have it covered. Sometimes just
natural old string." John Dossey.

HULLY-GULL

"Ye'd say, "hully-gull handful." If they guessed how
many, they got all of whatever ye was playing with. If not.
they had to make it up to ye with theirs. Say, you'd start
with 20 grains of corn. Each person would have that much
and each one would try to get the other one's corn." Emma
McDonald.

CALLING UP DOODLE BUGS

"Doodle bug, coddle bug, ye house is on fire. Doodle bug,
doodle bug, ye children will burn. Ye just continue sayin' that and they'll actually come
up out of their hole. They're queer little bugs about like ye,
no they're not as large as ye index fingernail, hardly. But
it's so much fun to see those little hokes movie'." Emma
McDonald.

FOXES AND DOGS

"This was a game where three or four of the kids would
be foxes and the rest would be dogs. They would have little
"fox dens" made out of sticks and sage grass.
The foxes would be safe in the dens and the dogs would
try to get them if they came out." Emma McDonald.

BUMBLE-DY, BUMBLE-DY BUCK

"This was done with the fingers. You would stand behind
someone and pound on his back and say, 'Bumble-dy,
bumble-dy buck, how many horns (fingers) do I hold Up?'
You would do that until he guessed the correct number
and then you would change places." Emma McDonald.

SNAKE

"They (your friends) lie down and ye take hold of their
heels and snake 'em and pull 'em around. " Emma
McDonald.

STINK BASE

"The group would divide up into two sides. Each side
would have a home base and each side would have a stink
base. When someone left their home base they could be
caught by the other side. If they were caught they were put
on the stink. The team that gets most of the other group on
their stink is the winner." Emma McDonald.

GOING TO NEW ORLEANS

This was a game where one person would pretend he was
doing something and the others would try to guess what it
was.
Player No. 1: Where are you from?
Player No. 2: New Orleans.
Player No. 1: What's ye trade?
Player No. 2: Lemonade.
Player No. 1: Go straight to work and work all day.
Player No. 2 would then start pretending that he was
doing some common act of work and the rest would try to
guess what he was doing." Emma McDonald.

DROP THE HANDKERCHIEF

"The kids would form a circle. One person would be the
"dropper." He would run around the circle and drop the
handkerchief behind someone else.
After he dropped it he would then try to get
around and back to his place in the circle before the one he
dropped it behind caught him. If he made it back then the
other one would become the "Dropper," and he would go
through the same process." Emma McDonald.

WOLF AT THE SPRING

"One child would be the mother and she would have
several children. She would send some of the children to
the spring to get some water. They would come back
without the water, saying they were scared, and that they
saw something at the spring. She would send them back
and the wolf (another child) would try to get them. If a
child was caught by the wolf, then he had to live with the
wolf." Emma McDonald.

STEALING STICKS

"The children were divided up into two groups. Each
group would have a pile of sticks. They would try to go over
and get sticks off of the other pile without getting caught.
This group that ran at~t of sticks first was the loser."
Emma McDonald.

WILD GOOSE CHASE

"The children would line up in a V-shaped line. One
child, not in the V would be the wild goose. He would say,
'Wild goose.' The rest would say, 'Ding clang,' and then run to catch
the wild goose." Emma McDonald.

LITTLE PUSSY, I WANT YOUR CORNER

"There would be one child in the room without a corner.
He would go from place to place saying, 'Puss, I want your
corner.' The child in the corner would say, 'I'm not going to give
it to YOU.' While he was in one corner, the kids in the other
corners would be switching places. The person that is 'it' has to try to get a corner while
one of the others is out of it. The person that is caught
without a corner then becomes 'it. " Emma McDonald.

WHAT DID YOUR GRANDMOTHER BRING YOU?

"This was a game where one child would ask another
child, 'What did your grandmother bring you?'
"The other child would then reply, 'A shoe.' Then he
would pat his foot

"They would ask the question again.
This time he would reply, 'Two shoes.' Then he would
pat both feet.

"They would ask the question again. This time he would
reply, 'Two shoes and a fan.' He would then pat both feet
and make a fanning motion with one hand.

"They would ask the question again. This time the reply
would be, 'Two shoes and two fans.' He would then pat both
feet and fan both hands.

"After each time, they would ask the question again.
Each time he would add something to his answer.

"The next answer would add a pair of spectacles. He
would then pat both feet, fan both hands, and blink his
eyes.

"The next answer would add a cap. He would then have
to pat both feet, fan both hands, blink eyes and nod his
head.

"Finally, the last answer would add a box of snuff. He
would have to pat both feet fan both hands, blink his eyes,
nod his head, and make a blowing motion with his mouth
all at the same time." Emma McDonald.

CLUB FIST

"This was a game where some kids would stack their
fists on top of each other. One would have a free hand and
he would try to knock the top fist off." Emma McDonald.

MAD DOG

"The children would stand some sticks up on end,
leaning against each other, forming a pyramid shape.
They would then try to push or pull someone into the sticks.
The child that they caused to knock the sticks down
became the 'mad dog.' He would then try to catch the other
kids. Every child that he caught became a 'mad dog' also,
and he would help catch the rest of the kids." Emma
McDonald.

STEALING KIDS

"One boy and girl was designated as one mother and
father and another boy and girl were another mother and
father. The rest of the kids were divided up between the
two. Each family would choose some stealers.

"One mother or father might send one of the children
over to visit the other family. When they would leave their
family the stealers would try to get them. The family that
lost all their children first was the loser. " Emma
McDonald.

BUZZARD

"This game started with two people holding hands. The
object was to try to catch other people and make the line
loneer and get everyone in the line. If they got everyone in
theline they would start over again. If the line was broken,
they would have to catch these people back again. " Emma
McDonald.

RESINING A HOUSE

"One of the favorite pranks that was done to anyone was
the house resining. This was done by taking a piece of
string and tying it to a little stick. Then they would stick
this little stick up under a board in the weather boarding of
the house. Then the person would stretch the string back away
from the house and hide somewhere. He would stretch the
string out and rub a piece of resin or bee's wax on the
string. This would make a very strange and scary noise on
the house. Usually it would frighten the occupants of the
house unless they found out what caused it.
It sounded just like tearin' the weather boardin' off ye
house." M. S. Agers.

Early settlers learned the resources of the Big South Fork area and
they could be put to use to provide almost all the necessities of daily life.
Still, a killing frost or flood miqht spell disaster. Anxiety toward the
end of a long, severe winter must h&ve been great as food stores dwindled.
Enough but not too much rain was critical for a successful growing seasoq
Because the weather was of such vital interest, prognostication lore developed
from close observation of the environment, primarily existing weather patterns
and animal behavior which might be related to future weather events.

Weather lore is one aspect of Big South Fork folklore which has widespread currency. Many old-timers observe that the weather has changed noticeably since they were young, sixty to seventy-five years ago. Spring generally comes later now, and some old dependable guidelines for predicting rain or shine no longer seem to work. One must also note that Gound Hog
Day, the traditional time for forecasting the arrival of Spring, should be
February 14, not February 2.

The items presented below are only part of the weather lore current
in the area, but they represent the body of guidelines vouched for by a
single individual, someone with an unusually curious turn of mind who has
tried to check out the sayings he has heard over eighty years, qualifying
or rejecting those which did not work. Thus these items are one man's actively used store of weather lore.

Changing Seasons

1. It will be three months from the first time you hear a katydid until
frost.

2. If the groundhog sees his shadow on Ground Hog Day, there will be forty
more days of bad weather; if not, winter is broke. (February 14)

3. Every day it thunders in February, it will frost the same day in May.
(If the weather is cloudy, it may not frost, but the temperature will
be cold enough for frost.)

Severity of Winter

4. The number of fogs in August determines how many snows there will be
the following winter.

5. Thick corn shucks mean a severe winter. Count the layers of shucks to
find out how many snows there will be.

6. Many people hold that more dark than light woolie worms presage a sever
winter. Our informant watches their behavior: If most of the woolie
worms seem to be headed southward, it will be a bad winter.

7. A popping wood fire is a sign that snow is coming soon.

8. If a rabbit stirs early on a snowy day, it will snow again the next day.

Rain or Shine

9. A ring around the moon with no stars inside is a sign of a week's pretty
weather, but there will be as many rains as there are stars inside the
ring.

10. Warm wind in summer means rain is in store.

11. Rain before seven will end by eleven. (This used to work but has been
failing lately.)

12. Smoke rises when fair weather is cominn and falls when bad weather is
coming.

13. If smoke from the chimney goes toward the ground, there will be fallin
weather.

14. When maple and poplar leaves turn upside down, rain is on the way.

16. If the sun shines while it is raining, it will rain again the next day.

17. When dew is on the grass,
Rain will come to pass.

Working by the Signs

These are the words of a Scott County farmer concerning the freedom and
responsibilities of farm management:

Now listen, I want you to understand--anybody that's got a farm,
when he wants to work, he works. When he feels like workin', he
gets out there and works, and when he don't, he don't have to, don't
you see? That's the main thing of farming. . .It's not like when
you're out here workin' on a job, you've got to be there or somebody else has got to come in and do your work. And here, when you
own your own farm, you're just as free as you can be, you see. Although you do realize when you're gettin' out here and makin' a crop, you've got to make it. There's just one time a year you can make it, and you try and get that done, and then you've got some
time. . .Why, it's like this--your farmin' has got to be managed.
It all is in the management of your farm. If you will manage it
right, it makes it easier on you. And when you plant some stuff,
you plant it in order it won't all of it come off at the same time,
you see. Now that's the way we plant our garden. We plant some of
to come off at one time--And I see some people plantin' their garden
plant the whole thing just as quick as they can plant it, all in one
day if they could. And then it's all gone at one time, and a lot of
the time that a way if they plant too much, they can't take care of
all of it. Some of it will ruin or spoil, like their roastin' ears
will get too hard before they can can it, put it away, freeze it, or
whatever they're coin'. I see a lot of that. But if you'll make
different plantin's of it, it comes in at a different time, you see?
And you're not in such a strain. You don't have to gather all of it
at one time. Makes it a lot easier.

The farmer has a great deal of freedom to plan his planting, cultivating and harvesting of crops, caring for livestock; maintaining his tools and equipment; building or repairing fences or buildings; harvesting timber) and countless other tasks. But mistakes in management of these many activities or simply bad 1uck w~th the weather can ruin him. It is only natural for the farmer to look beyond himself for guidance in planning his work and for reassurance in the face of the risks involved.

Working according to the signs of the zodiac and the phases of the moon
has provided the needed guidance and reassurance. One believer in signs
explained: "There's a whole lot in them signs. It's Nature I suppose, the
way the Lord intended. He thought they's just smart enough to catch onto
them things." The Biblical justification for following the signs is found
in Genesis 1:14: "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to
divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons,
nd for days, and years." And again, Ecclesiastes refers to the ordering
of life according to the signs; "To everything there is a season, and a
ime to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to
ie; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted" (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2).

A farmer's almanac or an almanac-calendar is used to determine when the
moon enters and leaves each of the twelve zodiac signs. The local farmers'
co-ops distribute such a calendar. Zodiac charts and interpretations from
T.E. Black's booklet, God's Way, are presented in the Foxfire article, "Planting by the Signs" (Wigginton 1972: 212-227). Other almanacs may vary from
lack in the details of planting rules presented.

Rules for planting by the signs collected from Big South Fork informants
re sometimes contradictory, and there seem to be two different principles
nderlying the logic of appropriate signs. One is the association of the
odiac signs with the elements fire, earth, air, and water according to the
cheme shown in the Foxfire articles (Wigginton 1972: 216). The other principle involves a correspondence between some characteristic of the sign and
he kind of growth pattern which is desired or to be avoided. According to
he first principle, planting in the head, Aries, should be avoided because
;his is a barren, masculine sign associated with fire. According to the
econd principle, however, cabbage should be planted in the head so that it
ll form well-shaped, compact heads.

The most consistent rules for planting by the signs collected in the
Big South Fork area concern moon phases rather than zodiac signs. And while
Black and other astrologers give rules for conducting various activities
such as digging and laying foundations, slaughtering, or cutting hair according to zodiac signs, almost all such rules collected in this area relate to
moon phase. The sole exception is the belief that any operation involving
flood-letting, such as pulling teeth, docking, or castrating, should be
done when the sign is away from the affected body part in order to avoid
excessive, possibly fatal, bleeding.

An almanac is necessary for following the zodiac signs, and the system
is complicated to remember. The principles associated with the waxing and
waning moon are less complex, and simple observation will suffice to keep
track of the moon's phase. Excerpts from a conversation with a couple
plant by the signs confirm these points:

Hus.: We also kind of go by the moon.

Wife: We don't plant in every one of these (zodiac) signs, you see
try to plant--

H: --beans when the sign's in the feet.

W:Yeah, and another good sign is when, is in the bowels.

H: The different things works different.

W:Now, a lot of your calendars will tell you when to plant stuff
above the ground or underneath the ground. . .planting days by
the moon. . .If you sow cabbage seed, you want to do that when
the sign's in the head--yeah, for sure--and then not plant corn
when the sign's in the arms-- :'

H: --in the knees.

W:Well, for it to come up not plant in the knees cause it'll just
curl up and not come up through the ground. But the way it
it grows too tall (when planted in the arms).

H: No, that's on the new of the moon.

W:Oh, yeah, when the moon is new the corn grows tall and the ear
high and stand right straight up at the end of the stalk.

H: And it don't yield as good.

W:(Plant) Irish potatoes when the sign, when the moon is--

H: --full.

W:Yeah. If you plant on the new of the moon, they'll come right
to the top of the ground and get sunburned. . .We always heard its
not to plant nothing when the sign was in the heart, but we planted
corn one time and forgot to look, and we had a good crop.

H:And a lot of it just depends on the season anyway. My grandmother
she couldn't read or write, but she could tell you the day the
changed, and the way she'd do it--on her fingers. I couldn't tell
you how it was, but she could tell you when it'd change again.

W:Well, it was done from watching and learning it just as it was.
There were no calendars or almanacs then.

The following list of rules for working by the signs was compiled from
local sources: folklife study informants, rules collected by folklore students of Mrs. Linda Stewart at Oneida High School (n.d.), and items included in Esther Sanderson's County Scott and its Mountain Folk (1958). For purposes of comparison, rules published in the Foxfire article (Wigginton 197) are noted if they conflict with the local material.

Planting by the Signs

Transplant trees when the moon is new in early fall or very early spring.

Plant seed for crops which yield above ground on the new moon and for plan
which yield root crops on the old moon.

Plant peas on the new moon in March.

Plant cabbage in the head. Do not plant in the head because it is a barren sign.
(Foxfire)

Plant beets in the feet.
Plant beets in the heart to keep the string out of them.
Do not plant in the heart because it is a death sign.
(Foxfire)

Plant Irish potatoes on the full moon. If planted on the new moon they will
make potatoes on top of the ground and the potatoes will be
sunburned and turn green.
Plant potatoes on the first quarter of the moon in April.
Plant potatoes in the heart and not in the new moon.
Don't plant potatoes on the new moon because they will go to
vine instead.
Don't plant potatoes in the feet or they will form lots of toes.

Plant cucumbers on the new moon in May, and they will make
earlier than if you plant them in April.
Plant cucumbers in the arms, and they will grow as long as your arm.
Plant cucumbers in the feet or arms.
Don't plant cucumbers in the feet, or they'll curl up like toes.
Don't plant cucumbers in the bowels.

Plant beans in the arms or in the thighs.
Plant beans in the feet or secrets.
Plant beans in the feet or bowels.
Don't plant beans in the bowels or they will have black spots. (Foxfire)
Plant beans in the heart.

Plant corn in the arms.
Don't plant corn in the head or it will all go to stalk.
Don't plant corn in the bowels or it will rot without coming up.
Don't plant corn in the knees or it will buckle and not come out of the ground.
Plant corn on the full of the moon so it won't grow so tall.
Don't plant corn on the new moon or it will all go to stalk.

When the New Year falls on the dark of the moon, there will be a good fruit harvest.
Don't dig potatoes on the new moon or they will rot.
Dig sweet potatoes on the first quarter so they won't rot.
Harvest in the old moon for keeping. (Foxfire)
Dig sweet potatoes on the third or last quarter of the moon so they won't rot.

Building Fences; Making Boards and Shingles

Split fence rails on the old moon; otherwise they will curve.

If you lay the rock foundation for a rail fence on the new moon, it will
sink and let your rails down onto the ground where they will rot.

Dig post holes on the old moon and you will be able to tamp them tight.
you dig post holes on the new moon, there will be a big mound of dirt
over and the post will be loose.

Rive boards on the old moon, and they will lay down flat.

Make shingles and nail them on in the old moon. If you put shingles on
roof in the new moon, the shingles will cup up and the roof will leak.

Soap Making

Make soap on the old of the moon, or it will be too strong.
If you try to soap on the new moon, it will boil
over.

Soap made on the new moon jells best. (Foxfire)

Make soap on the increase of the moon, or it
won't lather.

Kraut Making

Make sauerkraut on the new moon to have it firm and white.

Slaughtering

Kill hogs on the increase of the moon, or the meat will not shrink.

Slaughtering on the full moon makes meet swell; on the new
moon, it shrinks.

Slaughtering on the new moon makes the meat puffy and hard to
render. (Fox-fire)

Kil1 hogs on the dark of the moon to make a large quantity of
lard.

Slaugher in the knees or feet. (Foxfire)

Animal Husbandry, Personal Care

Wean colts, calves, and children on the new moon.

Wean a child or animal in a sign that does not rule the
vital parts of the body. (Foxfire)

Make ear crops to mark stock when the signs are in the legs
or feet.

Dock lambs' tails when the sign is in the heart.

Castrate pigs in the feet, when the sign has gone past the
affected part. (Foxfire)

Cut your hair in the new of the moon and put it under a rock. It will grow twice as long.

If you cut your hair in Libra, Saggitarius, Aquarius, or Pisces, it will grow stronger, thicker, and more beautiful. (Foxfire)

Howell, Benita. A Survey of Folklife Along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Knoxville, TN: UT Press, 1981. 82-9.

more GARDENING BELIEFS

In past years the home garden was a very important part of rural
America. It is still this way in Monroe County, although the practice has
been waning in recent years.

The people of earlier times would raise enough vegetables in their
garden to "live on" during the summer and then put enough up to get
them through the winter months. When it came time for the people to plant their gardens, one of the first things many of them would do would be look at their Farmer's Almanac
to see "if the sign is right" to do their planting.

There are many prevailing beliefs as to when to plant and how to care
for their gardens. Listed below are some of them.

"Plant green beans when the sign is in the arms. Ye'll
have beans as long as ye arm. " Kate Holland. Brown 8067,
8068.

"Good Friday is a good time to plant beans." Kate
Holland. Brown 8067-8081.

"Plant beans in the~full moon." Gertie Dossey.~Brown
8061-8062.

"Plant butterbeans when the sign is in the feet. Ye'll
have butterbeans on 'em thicker than the toes on ye feet. "
Kate Holland. Brown 8075.

"Plant corn on the old of the moon." Kate Holland.
Brown 8121.

"Plant cucumbers when the sign is in the arms." Gertie
Dossey. Brown 8167.

"If it frosts on sweet potatoes before they are dug, they
will rot." Kate Holland. Brown 8245.

To trace the settlement of Eastern Kentucky we must look
at the Cumberland Gap again. There stands one of the important
passes in western civilization. The American Revolution over,
our people staged one of the greatest folk movements in modern
times. To the north the people poured across the Northwest
Territory. To the south they skirted the southern tip of Appalachia and settled the Cotton Belt. From the middle reservoirs
of population m southern Pennsylvania and Piedmont Virginia
and North Carolina the pioneers threaded their way into the
Shenandoah Valley and converged on the Cumberland Gap by
way of Boone's Wilderness Trail. This movement began in 1775.
By 1180 a thousand were able to hold the Great Meadow against
constant Indian siege. In the same year 800 Kentucky and Tennessee frontiersmen marched off to King's Mountain to defeat
the British. The 1790 census listed nearly 75,000 people in the
region, enough to make it the fifteenth state in 1792. Almost 4,000
Kentuckians fought with Mad Anthony Wayne at the Battle of
Fallen Timbers in 1794. Here they finally defeated the northern
Indians who barred the way to the Midwest.

By 1800 the census revealed that no fewer than 220,000 people
had entered the new state. They had come to what they called
"a Eden of a place." It was the Promised Land. They came not
only through Cumberland Gap but also they took "nighcuts"
through other gaps in the Cumberland and Pine Mountam ranges
-at Pennington and Pine and Pound gaps. And they floated by
the thousands down the Ohio Rtver on large unwieldly flatboats.
They had to contest every mile of the way. Someone has counted
a humdred dead from exposure and Indian arrows on the Wilderness Road in one year, and some 1500 died in like manner in fifteen years along the Ohio water route. In 1814, 2200 Kentuckians strode off with Andy Jackson to subdue the southern
Indians and to fight the battle of New Orleans. By 1820 the
state had a population of near half a million. The good land of
the Bluegrass was taken up and the oncomers swept on down
the Ohio to southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and even to
Missouri and the Great River before the massive movement
slowed to normal migration. It was time to convert the dream
of Eden Homesteading into reality.

Nowadays Appalachia is labelled a depressed area, existing
in poverty and unemployment. It is commonplace to ask why
these people settled here and why they persist in staying on
barren ground and clinging to steep denuded hillsides. They
came to possess the virgin resources and to live in freedom.
Because the Bluegrass region of Kentucky filled up so rapidly,
the timber was soon cut and the land enclosed in fields for grain,
tobacco, livestock, and horses. The Bluegrass people themselves
began to prospect back into the eastern foothills of the state.
They found that the settlers of the mountain section had an
abundance of everything.

What did they have? What were some of the advantages of
the mountain people? In the first place, they were nearer by
a hundred miIes to markets in Virginia and on the Seaboard.
By way of Pound Gap they had begun to drive their herds of
cattle, horses, mules, hogs, sheep, and even turkeys to eastern
markets. These goods they traded in the populous cities and
returned with packhorses and wagons loaded with hardware,
dry goods, salt. They had begun to float their goods and later
coal and timber down the winding rivers to the Ohio Valley
and the Bluegrass. Secondly, the eastern foothills had an exhaustless supply of the finest varieties of timber-yellow poplar, oak,
chestnut, ash, hickory-for building and for fuels. Other fuels
began to appreciate in value-coal, oil, gas. They had numerous
salt licks, springs, wells and had beg~m to supply themselves
and the Bluegrass with this essential. The fast running streams
began to be used for transportation and for water power-sawing
lumber and grinding grain. Thirdly, they still had a plentiful
supply of wild game-elk, deer, bear, turkey, pigeon; and fur-
bearing animals-fox, mink, groundhog, coon, possum, polecat
And fourthly, the mountain people found that they loved their
tangled hills. In their instincts and memory and past experiences
they had been safe and free in the marches of the Rhine and
Wales and northern England and Scotland, and recently in the
American Piedmont. Now in interior America they could con-
tinue to develop their sense of freedom and hospitality into an
art. No more class or race or economic bars. No more monarchy,
no more colonialism or imposed religion. As John C. Campbell
puts it in his Southern Highlander and His Homeland, the American mountain people had an independence raised to the fourth power.

Such attitudes about migration led to interesting, informal methods of claiming land in the backcountry of the Cumberland

The land in these mountains is all claimed,
but it is probably not all covered by actual
patent. As evidence, a company has been
formed to speculate in lands not secured by
title. The old careless way of marking off
boundaries by going from tree to tree, by
partly surveying and partly guessing, explains
the present uncertainty. Many own land by
right of occupancy, there being no other claim.
The great body of the people live on and cultivate little patches which they either own, or
hold free, or pay rent for with a third of the
crop. These not unfrequently get together
and trade farms as they would horses, no deed
being executed. There is among them a mobile
element-squatters-who make a hill-side clearing and live on it as long as it remains productive; then they move elsewhere. This accounts
for the presence throughout the country of
abandoned cabins, around which a new forest
growth is springing up. Leaving out of consideration the few instances of substantial prosperity, the most of the people are abjectly poor,
and they appear to have no sense of accumulation. The main crops raised are corn and
potatoes. In the scant gardens will be seen
patches of cotton, sorghum, and tobacco; flax
also, though less than formerly. Many make
insuBicient preparation for winter, laying up
no meat, but buying a piece of bacon now and
then, and paying for it with work. In some
regions the great problem of life is to raise
two dollars and a half during the year for
county taxes. Being pauper counties, they
are exempt from State taxation. Jury fees
are highly esteemed and much sought after.
The manufacture of illicit mountain whiskey
-" moonshine "-was formerly, as it is now, a
considerable source of revenue; and a desperate sub-source of revenue from the same business has been the betrayal of its hidden places.

Allen, James L. The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky.... New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900. 229-30.

When a social band of this description had planted their
feet on the virgin soil, the first object was to fix on a spot,
central to the most fertile tract of land that could be found,
combining the advantages usually sought by the first settlers.
Among these was, that the station should be on the summit of
a gentle swell, where pawpaw, cane, and wild clover, marked
exuberant fertility; and where the trees were so sparse, and the
soil beneath them so free from underbrush, that the hunter
could ride at half speed. This virgin soil, as yet friable,
untrodden, and not cursed with the blight of politics, party and
feud, yielded~ with little other cultivation than planting, from
eighty to a hundred bushels of maize to the acre, and all other
edibles suited to the soil and climate, in proportion.

The next thing, after finding this oentral nucleus of a settlement, was to convert it into a station, an erection which now remains, to be described It was a desirable requisite, that a
station should inclose or command a flush limestone spring, for
water for the settlement. The contigunty of a salt lick and a
sugar orchard, though not indispensable, was a very desirable
circumstance. The next preluminary step was to clear a considerable area, so as to leave nothing within a considerable distance
of the station that could shelter an enemy from observation and
a shot. If a spring were not inclosed, or a well dug within, as
an Indian siege seldom lasted beyond a few days, it was customary, in periods of al&rm to have a reservoir of some sort within
the station, that should be filled with water enough to supply
the garrison, durmg the probable continuance of a siege. It was
deemed a most important consideration, that the station should
overlook and command as much of the surroumdmg country as
possible.

The form was a perfect parallelogram, including from a half
to a whole acre. A trench was then dug four or five feet deep,
and large and contiguous pickets planted in this trench, so as to
fonn a compact wall from ten to twelve feet high above the
soil. The pickets were of hard and durable timber, about a foot
in diameter. The soil about them was rammed hard. They
formed a rampart beyond the power of man to leap, climb, or
by unaided physical strength~ to ove~row. At the angles were
small projecting squares, of still stronger material and planting,
technically called flankers, with oblique port-holes, so as that
the sentinel within could rake the external front of the station,
without being exposed to a shot from without. Two folding gates
in the front and rear, swinging on prodigious wooden hinges,
gave ingress and egress to men and teams in times of security.

In periods of alarm a trusty sentinel on the roof of the building was so stationed, as to be able to descry every suspicious
object while yet in the distance. The gates were always firmly
barred by night; and sentinels took their alternate watch, and
relieved each other until morning. Nothing in the line of
fortification oan be imagined more easy of constrnotion, or a
more effectual protection against a savage enemy, than this
simple ereotion. Though the balls of the smallest dimensions
of cannon would have swept them away with ease, they were
proof against the Indian rifle, patience, and skill. The only
expedient of the red men was to dig under them and undermine
them, or destroy them by fire; and even this could not be done
without exposing them to the rifles of the flankers. Of oourse,
there are few recorded instances of their having been taken,
when defended by a garrison, gtuded by such men as Daniel
Boone.

Their regular form, and their show of security, rendered these
walled cities in the oentral wilderness delightful spectacles in
the eye of immigrants who had come two hundred leagues
without seeing a human habitation. Around the interior of
these walls the habitations of the immigrants arose, and the
remainder of the surface was a clean-surfed area for wrestling
and dancing, and the vigorous and athledc amusements of the
olden time. It is questionable if heartier dinners and profounder
sleep, and more exhilarating balls and parties fall to the lot of
their descendants, who ride in coaches and dwell in mansions.
Venison and wild turkeys, sweet potatoes and pies, smoked on
their table; and persimmon and maple beer, stood them well
instead of the poisonous whisky of their children.

The community, of course, passed their social evenings together; and while the fire blazed bright within the secure
square, the far howl of wolves, or even the distant war whoop
of the savages, sounded in the ear of the tranquil indwellers
like the driving storm pouring on the sheltering roof above the
head of the traveler safely reposing in his bed; that is, brought
the contrast of comfort and security with more home-felt
influence to their bosom.

h3>Boonesboro was not the only fort-like establishment in the Cumberland Gap...

At first they built for the tribe, working together like beavers in common cause
against nature and their enemies. Home-life and domestic architecture began among
them with the wooden-fort community, the idea
of which was no doubt derived from the frontier
defences of Virginia, and modified by the Kentuckians with a view to domestic use. This
building habit culminated in the erection of
some two hundred rustic castles, the sites of
which in some instances have been identified.
It was a singularly fit sort of structure, adjusting itself desperately and economically to
the necessities of environment. For the time
society lapsed into a state which, but for the
want of lords and retainers, was feudalism of the
rudest kind. There were gates for sally and
swift retreat, bastions for defence, and loopholes in cabin walls for deadly volleys. There
were hunting-parties winding forth stealthily
without horn or hound, and returning with
game that would have graced the great feudal
halls. There was siege, too, and suffering, and
death enough, God knows, mingled with the
lowing of cattle and the clatter of looms. Some
morning, even, you might have seen a slight
girl trip covertly out to the little cotton-patch
in one corner of the enclosure, and, blushing
crimson over the snowy cotton-bolls, pick the
wherewithal to spin her bridal dress; for in
these forts they married also and bore children.
Many a Kentucky family must trace its origin
through the tribal communities pent up within
a stockade, and discover that the family plate
consisted then of a tin cup, and, haply, an iron
fork....

Allen, James L. The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky.... New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900. 90-4.

feuds that flared up west of the Appalachian
range were made notorious bv Victorian sentiment.

Not that feuds are to be condoned or explained away. But they were not a standing custom of the inland people. They simply flared up during confused times and
levelled values after the horrors of the Civil War. Law and the
legal process was not deeply rooted in the newly formed counties
of the region. Men still felt that they were self-sufficient and must
defend their own. Besides, the "troubles" in eastern Kentucky did
not involve more than one per cent of the people and the number
killed in the few small pockets of bad feeling over the period of
1875 to l915 did not cause the homicide rate to fluctuate
noticeably over this long period. Possibly a hundred men lost their
lives during this period by direct feuding.

Still there were wars and "troubles" in the hills of Kentucky,
Virginia, and Tennessee in the aftermath of the senseless Civil
War. Though the region in general was overwhelmingly for the
Union, many men fought on the other side. And when the smoke
had cleared and all had returned (who ever could return), the
northern cause had prevailed. But three or more of the later
feud chiefs had returned in Confederate uniform. They had gone
away proud and independent and had returned-defeated. The
merest suspicion of slight or hint of inequality would smite them
to the heart. Thousands returning from the Southern cause were
welcomed and reintegrated among the common and clever folk.
Some few and in most cases the proud officers tried to prove
their equality, to themselves and to their people, by running for
public office. Generally they were defeated. Tensions rose and
unease set in. Somebody felt ostracized and rejected.

The Martin-Tolliver feud of Rowan County drew its first blood in
an election day to select a sheriff and other county officers.
One of the candidates was an ax-Confederate officer. The balloting was by voice vote. Everybody knew who was preferred and
how the contest stood throughout the day. In a voting place in
the county seat of Morehead a quarrel broke out. Guns and
knives came into play. One man was shot and knife-wounded,
as the ballad says:

"Twas in the month of August
All on election day
John Martin was shot and wounded
They say by Johnny Day
But Martin could not believe it
He could not think it so,
He thought it was Floyd Tolliver
Who struck the fatal blow.

Tolliver and Martin met several months later, when scars had
healed but not hearts. Tolliver was laid in his tomb. The sides
fought it out for six years unffl a pitched battle in the county
seat laid all the leaders of one side in their tombs.

Anderson Hatfield, a Confederate Captain, returned to his
home on the West Virginia bank of Tug and went about raising
his family by trading in livestock and other business. In 1873
four or five boys stole out to a mountainside to drink and play
cards. A quarrel arose and pistols came to the ready. Two or
three were wounded and one lay prone. He was a Hatfield.
In the fall of 1881 the farmers drove in their hogs from the mast
of the forest. Randal McCoy passed a Hatfield pigpen and saw
his mark in an old sow's ears-she had a litter of pigs. The men
and hog went to court before the squire-who was a Hatfield.
In the summer of 1882, all on election day, the crowd were voice
voting and drinking. Names were called and a Hatfield and a
McCoy came to fisticuffs. Others chipped in with knives and
guns. Ellison Hatfield lay sorely lacerated. Three McCoy broth-
ers were arrested and mounted for the long tap to the county
seat. At sundown the little cavalcade was accosted by a troop of
Hatfields who took the three brothers into custody with the
threat that if Ellison died the three would pay the pace. Ellison
died a night or two later. Next morning the three McCoys were
found on the Kentucky side of the Aver bank, tied to pawpaw
bushes-dead. Since the factions lived in separate states, the
Hatfield-McCoy raiding, along wi,th a paper battle between the
two governors, continued for several years.

These two heinous feuds and several lesser ones brought all
the notoriety upon the hapless mountain people. The counties
and even the state authorities were unable to bring law and
order. The state did furnish counsel and officers on occasion
and sent troops to protect citizens and courts in session. Public
opinion was so outraged that many innocent and some not so
innocent people left the state in anger and disgust. The wounds
left livid memorial scars that throbbed with slow-cooling passion.
But by the turn of the century the major troubles were over and
the lesser ones were contained within a valley or a county. The
newer generations were exhausting their energy in more fruitful
occupations.

skip ahead to see a ballad depicting the violence of the backcountry
One day, five summers ago, I was picking my
course, but not without pale human
apprehensions. At that time one did not visit
Pineville for nothing. When I reached it I found
it tense with repressed excitement. Only a few
days previous there had been a murderous
affray in the streets; the inhabitants had taken
sides; a dead-line had been drawn through the
town, so that those living on either side crossed
to the other at the risk of their lives; and there
was blue murder in the air. I was a stranger; I
was innocent; I was peaceful. But I was told
that to be a stranger and innocent and peaceful
did no good. Stopping to eat, I fain would have
avoided, only it seemed

best not to be murdered
for refusing. All that I now remember of the
dinner was a corn-bread that
would have made a fine building stone, being of
an attractive bluish tint, hardening rapidly upon
exposure to the atmosphere, and being
susceptible of a high polish. A block of this,
freshly quarried, I took, and then was up and
away. But not quickly, for having exchanged my
horse for another, I found that the latter moved
off as though at every step expecting to cross
the dead-line, and so perish. The impression of
the place was one never to be forgotten, with its
squalid hovels, its ragged armed men collected
suspiciously in little groups, with angry,
distrustful faces, or peering out from behind the
ambush of a window.

Following is a more objective study of the problem of violence in the backcountry...

The most prevalent kind of violent crime in the Big South Fork area
of a hundred years ago was unpremeditated shooting following an argument,
sometimes between enemies who bore longstanding grudges, but sometimes
between relatives. Elmora Matthews (1965: 107-115) in her study of kin-based communities in the Duck River Ridge area of Tennessee suggests some
of the strains which can cause normally cooperative kin ties to turn sour
at times. Disputes which might lead to violence occur most often between
in-laws and between kin belonging to different generations, such as fathers
and sons or uncles and nephews. Conflicts errupt over marriage choices,
property distribution, land transfers, and other economic matters. Matthews
notes that violence of this kind is most prevalent in the Duck River communities where there is greatest disparity between an egalitarian value system and actual differences in economic status among the nuclear families rising the community.

Within the Big South Fork area, localities most affected by economic
boom conditions seem also to have been the most beset by violence. The
relationship between alcohol and arguments ending in violence is equally
striking. Recongition of this pattern aroused law-abiding citizens against
saloons. For example, this item appeared in the Plateau Gazette of
January 24, 1884:

The effort made by Glen Mary to rid the village of saloons,
and their attendant disorders, assassinations and murders,
was recently rewarded by the powers of the four-mile law. A
school was started, and the saloons closed, and it was hoped
the unenviable character of the village might, in time, be
obliterated. Last Saturday, however, by order of the County
Court an election was held to incorporate a municipal government in opposition to the incorporated school. The boundaries were so run as to take in but one resident of Glen Mary proper, and then out and in among the miners favorable to the
scheme. To get the necessary twenty-one freeholder residents
within the boundary, an 8 x 10 lot was deeded to that number
of miners. That is how it was done. It is to be hoped the
school can be maintained even though the saloons are re-opened, and law and order once again seriously threatened.
There seems, too, to be some defect in the four-mile law which
is so highly valued in this State, when, as we have seen, it
can be so cunningly evaded.

The Sunbright Dispatch of January 2, 1897 carried this report of a series of shootings started because of drinking and carried on because
family members became involved in the fray. This may be one of the most
sensational incidents of its kind in the area's history but current newspapers contain all too many similar stories.

Helenwood, Tenn., Dec. 30--(Special.)--Last Sunday after-
noon at half past one o'clock two men were killed and one
wounded at this place as a result of one man being half full
of whiskey. That man was Louis Pemberton, who took a Win-
chester rifle out of his saloon and started down main street
shooting it off, till it aroused Marshall Frank Hughett, who
came upon the scene heavily armed. He asked Pemberton to lay
down his gun, and Pemberton, holding on to the breech, dropped the muzzle to the ground, but as he did not drop his
gun from his hands, Hughett fired upon him with a needle
gun hitting him in the side, the ball going through his body.

While all this was going on Jim Pemberton (Louis' father)
was walking rapidly down the street and by the time Hughett
had fired the elder Pemberton was upon him and fired two shots,
one striking him in the shoulder, sidewise. Then they
clinched and fell struggling. When the smoke cleared away,
Hughett was up and Pemberton was on the ground with two bullet
holes in his side, one supposed to have been made by Hughett's
wife and the other by Hughett, from which he died thirty
minutes afterwards.

After Louis Pemberton fell he rose upon his knees and fired
back at Hughett and his deputy, John David, with his Winchester,
but without effect. He then fell back in a dying condition
when Deputy David shot three shots at him while he was down
hitting him each time in the side.

He lived about fifteen minutes after being shot by David.

Trouble following drinking continues to be feared. Experience, as
has Puritanism, lies behind the strong disapproval of dancing and
parties expressed by many Big South Fork residents, because these were
occasions when public drinking occurred. The problem of the past remains
has been exacerbated by the presence of the automobile; more deaths
injury result from reckless driving while intoxicated.

Historically, economic boom conditions, immigration of outsiders to
the area's population, and urbanization were associated with an
increase in crime and violence. Some residents fear that intensive recreationa1 development will have the same effect. Control of alcoholic beverages and associated problems will be a key factor in determining whether National Park Service management of the BSFNRRA gains public
approval.

Howell, Benita. A Survey of Folklife Along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Knoxville, TN: UT Press, 1981. 187-9.

WHEN ROSCOE CHERRY KILLEDJOHN JACKSON

Local ballads are often written about feuds, murders, fires, robberies,
and various other topics of a sensational nature. The Cumberland River
in Monroe and Cumberland counties has contributed more than its
share of local ballads. "When Roscoe Cherry killed John Jackson" was
collected by Mary Proffitt of Temple Hill from her father in 1959. Roscoe
Cherry killed Jonn Jackson, was charged with manslaughter, and was
sentenced to the State Penitentiary in January, 1910, from two to
twenty-one years.

When John quit work on Mashes Creek,

He said I'm going to see my mother this week.

Then John went down to the Tennessee line

To spend his money on whiskey and wine.

Refrain: Hard times, hard times, the Tennessee line is hard times.

John came back through the steel yard

He saw those men playing those cards

Upon the hill in front of the shack

Went Roscoe Cherry with all the whiskey he could pack.

Refrain

He gave John one then he gave him two,

He gave him another and he thought it would do

Cherry was out with his pistol, and John with his knife

And Cherry said to John, Your money or your life.

Refrain

And Cherry was full of whiskey and wine

He mocked poor John as he was dying

Cherry left but he left a trail,

Proffitt caught him with Simmons and Hale.

Refrain

When they carried him into town

You could hear the funeral all around

John's mother wept and his sister cried

And if it hadn't been for whiskey, poor John would never
have died.

Refrain

Judge Carter to decide the case

He said to Cherry, Are you able to work for fifteen years for killing your neighbor?

The institutions of the Kentuckian have
deep root in his rich social nature. He
loves the swarm. The very motto of
the State is a declaration of good-fellowship,
and the seal of the commonwealth the act of
shaking hands. Divided, he falls. The Kentuckian must be one of many; must assert him-
self, not through the solitary exercise of his
intellect, but the senses; must see men about
him who are fat; grip his friend, hear cordial,
hearty conversation, realize the play of his emotions. Society is the multiple of himself.

Hence his fondness for large gatherings:
open-air assemblies of the democratic sort--great agricultural fairs, race-courses, political
meetings, barbecues and burgoos in the woods
-where no one is pushed to the wall, or reduced to a seat and to silence, where all may
move about at will, seek and be sought, make
and receive impressions. Quiet masses of people in-doors absorb him less. He is not fond of
lectures, does not build splendid theatres or expend lavishly for opera, is almost of Puritan
excellence in the virtue of church-going, which
in the country is attended with neighborly reunions.

This large social disposition underlies the
history of the most social of all his days-a day
that has long had its observance embedded in
the structure of his law, is invested with the
authority and charm of old-time usage and
reminiscence, and still enables him to commingle business and pleasure in a way of his
own. Hardly more characteristic of the Athenian was the agora, or the forum of the Roman,
than is county court day characteristic of the
Kentuckian. In the open square around the
court-house of the county-seat he has had the
centre of his public social life, the arena of his
passions and amusements, the rallying-point of
his political discussions, the market-place of his
business transactions, the civil unit of his institutional history.

It may be that some stranger has sojourned
long enough in Kentucky to have grown familiar with the wonted aspects of a county town.
He has remarked the easy swing of its daily
life: amicable groups of men sitting around
the front entrances of the hotels; the few purchasers and promenaders on the uneven brick
pavements; the few vehicles of draught and
carriage scattered along the level white
thoroughfares. All day the subdued murmur of
patient local traffic has scarcely drowned the
twittering of English sparrows in the maples.
Then comes a Monday morning when the
whole scene changes. The world has not been
dead, but only sleeping Wnence this sudden
surging crowd of rural folk-these lowing herds
in the streets ? Is it some animated pastoral
come to town ? some joyful public anniversary
? some survival in altered guise of the English
country fair of mellower times ? or a vision of
what the little place will be a century hence,
when American life shall be packed and
agitated and tense all over the land ? What a
world of homogeneous, good - looking,
substantial, reposeful people with honest front
and amiable meaning! What bargaining and
buying and selling by ever-forming,
ever-dissolving groups, with quiet laughter and
familiar talk and endless interchange of
domestic interrogatories I You descend into the
street to study the doings and spectacles from a
nearer approach, and stop to ask the meaning of
it. Ah! it is county court day in Kentucky; it is
the Kentuckians in the market-place.

They have been assembling here now for
nearly a hundred years. One of the first
demands of the young commonwealth
in the woods was that its vigorous, passionate
life should be regulated by the usages of civil
law. Its monthly county courts, with justices
of the peace, were derived from the Virginia
system of jurisprudence, where they formed the
aristocratic feature of the government. Virginia itself owed these models to England; and
thus the influence of the courts and of the decent and orderly yeomanry of both lands passed,
as was singularly fitting, over into the ideals
of justice erected by the pure-blooded colony.
As the town-meeting of Boston town perpetuated the follimote of the Anglo-Saxon free
state, and the Dutch village communities on
the shores of th,e Hudson revived the older
ones on the banks of the Rhine, so in Kentucky, through Virginia, there were transplanted by the people, themselves of clean stock and
with strong conservative ancestral traits, the
influences and elements of English law in relation to the county, the court, and the justice
of the peace.

Through all the old time of Kentucky State
life there towers up the figure of the justice of
the peace. Commissioned by the Governor to
hold monthly court, he had not always a courthouse wherein to sit, but must buy land in the
midst of a settlement or town whereon to build
one, and build also the contiguous necessity of
civilization-a jail. In the rude court-room he
had a long platform erected, usually running
its whole width; on this platform he had a
ruder wooden bench placed, likewise extending all the way across; and on this bench, having ridden into town, it may be, in dun-colored
leggings, broadcloth pantaloons, a pigeon-tailed
coat, a shingle - caped overcoat, and a twelvedollar high fur hat, he sat gravely and sturdily
down amid his peers; looking out upon the
bar, ranged along a wooden bench beneath,
and prepared to consider the legal needs of his
assembled neighbors. Among them all the
very best was he; chosen for age, wisdom,
means, weight and probity of character; as a
rule, not profoundly versed in the law, perhaps
knowing nothing of it-being a Revolutionary
soldier, a pioneer, or a farmer-but endowed
with a sure, robust common-sense and rectitude of spirit that enabled him to divine what
the law was; shaking himself fiercely loose
from the grip of mere technicalities, and deciding by the natural justice of the case; giving
decisions of equal authority with the highest
court, an appeal being rarely taken; perpetuating his own authority by appointing his
own associates: with all his shortcomings and
weaknesses a notable, historic figure, high-minded, fearless, and incorruptible, dignified,
patient, and strong, and making the county
court days of Kentucky for wellnigh half a
century memorable to those who have lived
to see justice less economically and less honorably administered.

But besides the legal character and intent of
the day which was thus its first and dominant
feature, divers things drew the folk together.
Even the justice himself may have had quite
other tha,~ magisterial reasons for coming to
town; certainly the people had. They must
interchange opinions about local and national
politics, observe the workings of their own laws,
pay and contract debts, acquire and transfer
property, discuss all questions relative to the
welfare of the community-holding, in fact, a
county court day much like one in Virginia
in the middle of the seventeenth century.

But after business was over, time hung idly
on their hands; and being vigorous men,
hardened by work in forest and field, trained in
foot and limb to fleetness and endurance, and
fired with admiration of physical prowess, like
riotous school-boys out on a half-holiday, they
fell to playing. All through the first quarter of the
century, and for a longer time, county court day
in Kentucky was, at least in many parts of the
State, the occasion for holding athletic games.
The men, young or in the sinewy manhood of
more than middle age, assembled once a month
at the county-seats to witness and take part in
the feats of muscle and courage. They wrestled,
threw the sledge, heaved the bar, divided and
played at fives, had foot-races for themselves,
and quarter-races for their horses. By-and-by,
as these contests became a more prominent
feature of the day, they would pit against each
other the champions of different neighborhoods. It would become widely known before
hand that next county court day " the bully "
in one end of the county would whip "the
bully" in the other end; so when court day
came, and the justices came, and the bullies
came, what was the county to do but come
also ? The crowd repaired to the common, a
ring was formed, the little men on the outside
who couldn't see, Zaccheus-like, took to the
convenient trees, and there was to be seen a
fair and square set-to, in which the fist was the
battering-ram and the biceps a catapult. What
better, more time-honored proof could those
backwoods Kentuckians have furnished of the
humors in their English blood and of their
English pugnacity? But, after all, this was
only play, and play never is perfectly satisfy
ing to a man who would rather fight; so from
playing they fell to harder work, and through
out this period county court day was the
monthly Monday on which the Kentuckian
regularly did his fighting. He availed himself
liberally of election day, it is true, and of regimental muster in the spring and battalion mus
ter in the fall-great gala occasions; but county
court day was by all odds the preferred and highly prized season. It was periodical, and could
be relied upon, being written in the law, noted
in the almanac, and registered in the heavens.

A capital day, a most admirable and serene
day for fighting. Fights grew like a freshwater polype-by being broken in two: each
part produced a progeny. So conventional
did the recreation become that difficulties occurring out in the country between times regularly had their settlements postponed until the
belligerents could convene with the justices.
The men met and fought openly in the streets,
the friends of each standing by to see fair play
and whet their appetites.

Thus the justices sat quietly on the bench
inside, and the people fought quietly in the
streets outside, and the day of the month set
apart for the conservation of the peace became
the approved day for individual war. There
is no evidence to be had that either the justices or the constables ever interfered.
These pugilistic encounters had a certain
law of beauty: they were affairs of equal combat and of courage. The fight over, animosity
was gone, the feud ended. The men must
shake hands, go and drink together, become
friends. We are touching here upon a grave
and curious fact of local history. The fighting
habit must be judged by a wholly unique standard. It was the direct outcome of racial traits
powerfully developed by social conditions.

Another noticeable recreation of the day
was the drinking. Indeed, the two pleasures
went marvellously well together. The drinking
led up to the fighting, and the fighting led up to
the drinking; and this amiable co-operation might
be prolonged at will. The merchants kept barrels
of whiskey in their cellars for their customers.
Bottles of it sat openly on the counter, half-way
between the pocket of the buyer and the shelf
of merchandise. There were no saloons
separate from the taverns. At these whiskey
was sold and drunk without screens or scruples.
It was not usually bought by the drink, but by the
tickler. The tickler was a bottle of narrow
shape, holding a half-pintjust enough to tickle.
On a county court day wellnigh a whole town
would be tickled. In some parts of the State
tables were placed out on the sidewalks, and
around these the men sat drinking mint- juleps
and playing draw-poker and " old sledge."

Meantime the day was not wholly given over
to playing and fighting and drinking. More
and more it was becoming the great public day
of the month, and mirroring the life and spirit
of the times-on occasion a day of fearful, momentous gravity, as in the midst of war, finan-
cial distress, high party feeling; more and
more the people gathered together for discussion and the origination of measures determin-
ing the events of their history. Gradually new
features incrusted it. The politician, observing the crowd, availed himself of it to announce
his own candidacy or to wage a friendly campaign, sure, whether popular or unpopular, of
a courteous hearing; for this is a virtue of the
Kentuckian, to be polite to a public speaker,
however little liked his cause. In the spring,
there being no fairs, it was the occasion for exhibiting the fine stock of the country, which
was led out to some suburban pasture, where
the owners made speeches over it. In the winter, at the close of the old or the beginning of
the new year, negro slaves were regularly hired
out on this day for the ensuing twelvemonth,
and sometimes put upon the block before the
court-house door and sold for life.

But it was not until near the half of the second quarter of the century thal: an auctioneer
originated stock sales on the open square, and
thus gave to the day the characteristic it has
since retained of being the great market-day of
the month. Thenceforth its influence was to
be more widely felt, to be extended into other
counties and even States; thenceforth it was
to become more distinctively a local institution
without counterpart.

To describe minutely the scenes of a county
court day in Kentucky, say at the end of the
half-century, would be to write a curious page
in the history of the times; for they were possible only through the unique social conditions
they portrayed. It was near the most prosperous period of State life under the old regime.
The institution of slavery was about to culminate and decline. Agriculture had about as
nearly perfected itself as it was ever destined
to do under the system of bondage. The war
cloud in the sky of the future could be covered
with the hand, or at most with the country gentleman's broad-brimmed straw-hat. The whole
atmosphere of the times was heavy with ease,
and the people, living in perpetual contemplation of their superabundant natural wealth, bore
the quality of the land in their manners and
dispositions....

[People travelled from all over to participate in county court day]

A rural cavalcade indeed! Besides the carriages, buggies, horsemen, and pedestrians,
there are long droves of stock being hurried on
towards the town-hundreds of them. By the
time they come together in the town they will
be many thousands. For is not this the great
stock-market of the West, and does not the
whole South look from its rich plantations and
cities up to Kentucky for bacon and mules?
By-and-by our family carriage does at last get
to town, and is left out in the streets along with
many others to block up the passway according
to the custom.

The town is packed. It looks as though by
some vast suction system it had with one exercise of force drawn all the country life into itself. The poor dumb creatures gathered in
from the peaceful fields, and crowded around
the court-house, send forth, each after its kind,
a general outcry of horror and despair at the
tumult of the scene and the unimaginable mystery of their own fate. They overflow into the
by-streets, where they take possession of the
sidewalks, and debar entrance at private residences. No stock-pens wanted then; none wanted now. If a town legislates against these stock
sales on the streets and puts up pens on its outskirts, straightway the stock is taken to some
other market, and the town is punished for its
airs by a decline in its trade.

As the day draws near noon, the tide of life
is at the flood. Mixed in with the tossing horns
and nimble heels of the terrified, distressed,
half-maddened beasts, are the people. Above
the level of these is the discordant choir of
shrill-voiced auctioneers on horseback. At the
corners of the streets long-haired-and long-eared doctors in curious hats lecture to eager
groups on maladies and philanthropic cures.
Every itinerant vender of notion and nostrum
in the country-side is there; every wandering Italian
harper or musician of any kind, be he but a sightless
fiddler, who brings forth with poor unison of voice
and string the brief and too fickle ballads of the time,
" Gentle Annie," and " Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt."
Strangely contrasted with everything else in
physical type and marks of civilization are the
mountaineers, who have come down to " the
settlemints " driving herds of their lean, stunted
cattle, or bringing, in slow-moving, ox-drawn "
steamboat" wagons, maple-sugar, and baskets, and
poles, and wild mountain fruit-faded wagons, faded
beasts, faded clothes, faded faces, faded everything.
A general day for buying and selling all over the
State. What purchases at the dry-goods stores and
groceries to keep all those negroes at home fat and
comfortable and comely-cottons, and gay
cottonades, and gorgeous turbans, and linseys of
prismatic dyes, bags of Rio coffee and barrels of
sugar, with many another pleasant thing!.... A surging populace,
an in-town holiday for all rural folk, wholly
unlike what may be seen elsewhere in this
country. The politician will be sure of his
audience to-day in the court-house yard; the
seller will be sure of the purchaser; the idle man
of meeting one still idler; friend of seeing distant
friend; blushing Phyllis, come in to buy fresh
ribbons, of being followed through the throng by
anxious Corydon.

And what, amid this tumult of life and affairs
-what of the justice of the peace, whose
figure once towered up so finely? Alas ! quite
outgrown, pushed aside, and wellnigh forgotten.
The very name of the day which once so
sternly commemorated the exercise of his
authority has wandered into another meaning.
"County court day " no longer brings up in the
mind the image of the central court-house and
the judge on the bench. It is to be greatly feared
his noble type is dying. The stain of venality has
soiled his homespun ermine, and the trail of the
office-seeker passed over his rough-hewn
bench. So about this time the new constitution
of the commonwealth comes in, to make the
autocratic ancient justice over into the modern
elective magistrate, and with the end of the a
half-century to close a great chapter of
wonderful county court days...

The following selection is a more scientific analysis of the politics of the Cumberland backcountry.

Like most of Appalachia, the Big South Fork area was first
settled under frontier conditions. It was some time before
formal political and legal institutions followed the settlers. These frontier
communities had some internal resources for social control--the
obligations of kinship and a system of ethics derived from their
religion. Theirs was a society based on a moral order (see
Redfield 1947). Although some influential authors (e.g. Caudill 1963) still
subscribe to the notion that Appalachians are inherently lawless
because they are the descendants of outlaws and social misfits
who sought refuge in the mountains to evade the legal and social
order of the seaboard colonies, scholarly historians have
convincingly discredited this myth (see Caruso 1959; Leyburn
1962).

Informal social controls could be effective in Appalachia as in
other "folk" societies so long as the settlement was a homogeneous
unit based on kinship obligations and a shared moral code. But
before the nineteenth century was over, economic development was
already placing severe stress on the traditional system of social
control. The population grew and became more heterogeneous. New
quasi-urban towns and camps sprang up, bringing together people who
did not feel that they were members of a community in the
traditional sense. Those who abandoned farming for wage work
suddenly had extra cash and leisure time, and whiskey was the most
convenient means of spending the two simultaneously. Disputation and
lawlessness increased under these circumstances. Formal political
and legal institutions were strengthened to deal with these
problems, but they did not always coexist comfortably with the
traditional pattern of kin loyalty. This chapter examines these
developments and the two faces of social control-law and
lawlessness.

County Formation and County Politics

Organized government came slowly to the upper reaches of the
Cumberland Plateau because the population dispersed into wilderness
areas faster than roads could be built to connect new settlements
with their county seats. The rough wagon roads that were built were
impassible in bad weather. Eventually public pressure forced the
formation of new counties with county seats more accessible to the
pioneer settlements. Morgan County was created from western
portions of Anderson and Roane Counties in 1817, and northward
expansion over the plateau soon produced Fentress County (1823),
then Scott County (1849). Both of these counties included territory
which had been in old Morgan County. The northern boundary of
Fentress and Scott was not established conclusively until almost
1860 (see Sanderson 1958: 3-4). Kentucky and Tennessee disputed
jurisdiction over the territory from the present state line south
as far as Oneida, even though this area contained some of the
oldest settlements along the Big South Fork. State and county
government must have seemed remote indeed to families living in the
Williams Creek, Station Camp, and No Business settlements before
the jurisdictional dispute was settled.

In Kentucky, it was not until 1912 that McCreary County was carved
out of sections of Wayne, Whitley, and Pulaski Counties. Although Perry
(1979: 47) asserts that the Stearns Company advocated the status quo and
preferred to deal with the three counties rather than with a single local
government, other informants hold that Stearns officials favored the new
county. They were concerned because the three sets of law officers,
based in a distant county seat, were not maintaining order effectively in
the back country where Stearns camps were located. Population growth and
concentration in the Stearns domain demanded effective formal means of
social control.

Another force towards county formation was the desire of local politicians to strengthen their own position. Pine Knot citizens spearheaded
the county-formation campaign, assuming that Pine Knot would become the
county seat. However, Whitley City (then Coolidge) became a contender an
won the referendum. Several informants are old enough to remember the
special 1912 Fourth of July celebrations honoring the new county, the con
tension between Pine Knot and Whitley City, and the county's earliest
referenda and elections. This account describes events in a community
near the Wayne County line.

Well, they had a big barbecue at Whitley; they killed beefs
and barbecued the whole beef, maybe a hog or two, and plenty
of whiskey. And then they had a barbecue at my Dad's (in western McCreary County). A year later, me and my brother 'd
find pints of whiskey hid behind logs, where they'd hid it
and got too drunk to go back and find it. . .Them used to be
days back then. A feller'd be runnin' when they had big
barbecues, they'd maybe be three or four runnin' for judge,
three or four for clerk, three or four for jailer, and two or three for sheriff, and they really worked too--made big
speeches you know. And they always had somebody out a
givin' out the whiskey, see, to vote for 'em. . .

The toughest time they ever had in this county, the county
seat when it first come, it was at Pine Knot. And they got
a 'lection up to vote for it to come to Whitley. . .I remember there was two men voted for it to stay at Pine Knot. They
(other residents of the community) found it out late that
evening, and they cut them a pole and some hickory whips and
followed them two men plumb home. Well, if they'd caught 'em
afore they got home, they'd a put 'em on that pole and killed
'em. They's two people voted fer it to go to Pine Knot; that
made 50 or 75 people mad; and if they'd caught 'em, they'd a
killed 'em, there wasn't no question about it.

Q: Politics was pretty wild and wooly back then, wasn't it?

A: Oh, hit was tough back them days. Yeah, boy. You had to
be very careful who you told you'd vote fer. Now if you told
'em wrong man that the majority was fer, you's in trouble.
You either turned over and voted right, or left out, one. You
didn't stay around.

Q: Did people get in trouble selling their votes to both sides?
What happened to them when they got found out?

A: They'd usually have to leave the county. They'd take off to
Wayne County or some other county. They couldn't stay around.
That's the way with these two fellers who voted for the county
seat to go to Pine Knot. They soon sold out and went to Wayne
County.

The local historians Sanderson (1958: 85-99) and Perry (1979: 180204) frankly admit that old-style politics was full of mud-slinging campaigns, vote buying, ballot box stuffing, and
other strong arm methods. The heat of the campaign might explode
into violence at the slightest provocation, especially when
whiskey was on hand to add fuel to the fire. Even law officers or
potential law officers were not immune to these outbursts. In
fact, back when western McCreary County still belonged to Wayne
County, two candidates for sheriff met at a voting house on
election day, exchanged a volley of insults, and finally shot
each other dead.

Howell, Benita. A Survey of Folklife Along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Knoxville, TN: UT Press, 1981. 181-3.

of things. But in the order of events, the
tran~on of unlettered hackwoods emigrants to a people with
a police, and all the engines of civilization was unoommonly
rapid. There was no other paper within five hundred miles of
the one now established by Mr. Bradford, at Lexington. The
political heartburnings and slander that had hitherto been
transmitted through rough oral ohannels, were now conoentrated for
circulation in this gazette.

In April, 1792, Kentucky was admitted into the Union as an
independent state; improvements were steadily and rapidly
progressing, and notwithstanding the hostility of the Indians,
the population of the state was regularly increasing until the
peace which followed the victory of Gen. Wayne. After which,
as has been observed, the tide of emigration poured in,to the
oountry with unexampled rapidity.

Litigation in regard to land titles now began to increase, and
continued until it was carried to a distressing height. Col. Boone
had begun to turn his attention to the cultivation of the choice
tracts he had entered, and he looked forward with the consoling
thought that he had enough to provide for a large and rising
family, by securing to each of his children, as they became of
age, a fine plantation. But in the vortex of litigation which
ensued, he was not permitted to escape. The speculators who
had spread their greedy claims over the lands which had been
previously located and paid for by Boone, relying upon his
imperfect entries, and some legal flaws in his titles, brought
their ejeotments against him, and dragged him into a oourt of
law. Here the old hunter listed to the quibbles-the subtleties,
and to him, inexplicable jargon of the lawyers. His suits were
finally decided against him, and he was cast out of the possession of all, or nearly all the lands which he had looked upon as
being indubitably his own. The indignation of the old pioneer
can well be imagined, as he saw himself thus strips, by the
quibbles and intricacies of the law, of all the rewards of his
exposures, labors, sufferings and dangers in the first settlement
of Kentucky. He hecame more than ever disgusted with the
grasping and avaricious spirit-the heartless intercourse and
technical forms of what is called civilized society.

But having expended his indignation in a transient paroxysm,
he soon settled back to his customary mental complacency and
self-possession; and as he had no longer any pledge of consequence reqarding to him in the soil of Kentucky and as it
was, moreover, becoming on all sides subject to the empire of
the cultivator's axe and plow, he resolved to leave the country. I
He had wi~ed with regret the dispersion of the band of
pioneers, with whom he had hunbed and fought, side by side,
and like a band of brothers, shared every hardship and every
danger; and he sighed for new fields of adventure, and the
excitement of a hunter's life.

Influenced by these feelings, he removed from Kentucky to
the Great Kanawha; where he settled near Point Pleasant. He
had been informed that buffaloes and deer were still to be found
in abundance on the unsettled bottoms of this river, and that
it was a fine country for trapping. Here he continued to reside
several years. But he was disappointed in his expeatations of
finding game. The vicinity of the settleme~ts above and below
this unsebtled region, had driven the buffaloes fom the country;
and though there were plenty of deer, yet he derived but little
success from his trappqng. He finally commenced raising stock,
and began to turn his attention to agriculture.

While thus engaged, he met with some persons who had
returned from a tour up the Missouri, who described to him
the fine country bordering upon that river. The vast prairies
-the herds of buffaloes-the grizzly bears-the beavers and
others; and above all, the ancient and unexplored forests of
that unknown region, fired his imagination, and produced at
once a resolve to remove there.

Accordingly, gathering up such useful articles of baggage as
were of light carriage, among which his trusty rifle was not forgotten, he started with his family, driving his whole stock of cattle
along with him, on a pilgrimage to this new land of promise. He
passed through Cincinnati on his way thither in 1798. Being
enquired of as to what had induced him to leave all the
comforts of home, and so rich and flourishing a country as his
dear Kentucky, which he had discovered, and had helped to
win from the Iodians, for the wilds of Missouri? "Too crowded,"
replied he-"too crowded-I want more elbow room." He
proceeded about forty-five miles above St. Louis, and settled in
wbat is now St. Charles County. This country being still in the
possession of the French and Spanish, the ancient laws by which
these territories were governed were still in force there. Nothing
could be more sunple than their whole system of administration.
They had no constitution, no king, no legislative assemblies, no
judges, juries, lawyers, or sheriBs. An officer, called the Commandant, and the priests exercised all the functions of civil
magistrates, and decided the few controversies which arose
among these primitive inhabitants, who held and occupied many
things in common. They suffered their ponies, their cattle, their
swine, and their flocks to ramble and graze on the same common
prames and pastures-having but few fences or inclosures, and
possessing but little of that spirit of speculation, enterprise, and
money-making, which has always characterized the Americans.

These simple laws and neighborly customs suited the peculiar
habits and temper of Boone. And as his character for honesty,
courage, and fidelity followed him there, he was appointed
Commandmant for the district of St. Charles by the Spanish
Commandmant. He retained this comnand, and continued to
exercise the duties of his office with credit to himself, and to
the satisfaction of all connected, until the laws of the
United States went into effect.

Flint, Timothy. Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone. James K. Folsom Ed. New Yaven, CT: College and University Press, 1967. 176-8.